tpull

Thanks for the numbers, ATRAtwo. Now if only I knew why I kept missing the Empath Defender...

I'm not sure how they will find a better balance for PvP myself, unless they just want to keep some of that rock, paper, scissors feel to it, and just say that things like the massive bonus of Build Up and similar powers are permanent Achille's hells that SR has to live with.

For PvE, the combined changes of Issues 5 and 6 made me feel a little squishy, more than I thought I should be, as an SR Scrapper. I walked away alive from all of the fights, but I kept thinking that I should have a little more health at the end, because they really should not have been tagging me so much! I don't really want the uber-ness of perma-Elude, but I do think I shoud be able to wade into a group of four or five even-cons and come away relatively unscathed, if I have taken all of the defensive powers in the set. That is the idea inherent in "super reflexes," after all.

Of course, Martial Master is a little different, because he never took Focused Senses or Evasion (but that changed with my latest Respec). I expected him to take a few more hits. I actually have a good feeling about Issue 7, at least regarding SR. I still have a mental opposition to the damage resist they added, because it taints the "pure defense" concept that I was basically imprinted with when I first looked at the set, but I'll survive.

Ideal for my mindset would be if the Issue 7 changes to scaling defense are good enough, they might decide the damage resists can go away, and we get the orignal concept of SR back, but I sincerely doubt that would happen.

My current impression of one of my favorite powersets is that it's looking good, the I7 changes should help it to balance better in PvP, help out in PvE very well, and the only things I want are perma-backflips when I punch Elude, whether it's up or not, and an official Developer re-examination of Elude's recharge time after all of these cumulative changes. Not too shabby.

I'm gonna check! I figured that stuff was automatically enabled to show it off, but maybe in my settings it's turned off to start with.

Entry 111

MM II runs a couple missions and ends up in Siren’s Call, and I have him take all four missions from the contact there. Once I get through with that, I wander around trying to find villains, and hit the hotspot places to help the heroes win battles. I am invited to a team, and I join immediately, since I can’t find a single villain to save my life. As we go along, there are a precious couple who dare to show themselves. As the night progresses, the heroes win enough fights that the zone changes from under villain control to under hero control.

Fighting villains is tough exhausting work, mostly because they always run! I expected that from Stalkers and squishies, but the Brute?!? A Mastermind hovers at the edge of a battle, but he immediately turns and runs back to the villain base evry single time. One time I decide to really make a solid attempt, and all I need is one more hit on him, but we are squarely in the villain base, and I am surrounded by hopeless odds, so I go to the hospital instead. I just wanted to get a taste of the PvP zone, but endlessly Super Jumping around is really futile.

I get a couple of bounties, but my map is bugged. I get two readings of the same guy, and old bounties stay on my map when a new one is supposed to show up for me. When I get one as a bounty, she simply Teleports to the top of a really tall building and stays there. I can’t reach her, and can’t fight her at all. Ptheh! When they finally decide to actually play, they always wait until I’m fighting NPCs, and ambush me, and I notice that I miss a lot, but their attacks seem to hit more often than miss. So much for SR being defense-based, as usual!

I send some to the hospital, but get sent more often than not myself, as the villains only stand and fight if there are two of them against me. As the night drags on, there are only two heroes left, a Blaster and myself, and we’re standing around asking for villains to attack us in Broadcast. One Stalker hovers at the periphery, but every time I jump after him, he runs away. Three times in a row, and I stop chasing. When one of them knocked me out earlier, I send a broadcast saying good job, and once a tell to the person, I think. None of them ever replied at all. I end the night feeling like PvP is a little bit of a waste if you’re not already with friends. I tried to be polite and friendly, but nobody wanted to talk in the slightest, and I spent most of the hours there using Super Jump in a futile attempt just to get face to face with one of them. PvP is fighting, not chasing people around the map! I’m hoping if I do more of it, there will be more teaming and more villains to fight. This was kind of boring, and the zone was almost a ghost town, I only saw maybe six or seven villains the entire time.

Entry 110

By last count I have about 24 characters as heroes, and I manage to get the holiday mission done for about 18 of them. It’s not tedious for me, as many of them I haven’t logged on in a while, so it’s fun to see my different costumes and remember how I placed the powers on each of them. By the time I switch to my villains, though, the mission itself is getting a little redundant, so I mostly just use Hide and/or the jetpack to get the mission done.

As I run through the tutorial with a Natural Stalker named Ekato, I notice that there are very few correctional officers in the jail’s courtyard; I wonder if that’s on purpose. I had originally planned to keep the villains out of the journal, but sometimes neat things happen that I feel are worth sharing. For example, my main villain right now is a Mastermind called Loser, and it’s just hilarious how much fun the story text is now with that kind of name. Kalinda tells me: “Your future is looking quite bright, Loser.” Hah! On a mission with a video cutout, a Snake says, “But I heard there was someone sspecial. One they call Loser.” Brilliant! I’ve got guys telling me, “I have nothing more for you, Loser,” or “Great job, Loser!” I think it’s the best character name I have so far, just because of that.

After the holidays, Martial Master gets a Respecification on the Test Server, and I run him around some areas new to me, like Bloody Bay and Siren’s Call. In Bloody Bay, I collect all of the shards and then knock out the firebase. Some of the turrets respawn, so I run around and take them out again. Since Martial Master is exemplared down from level 50, that may have helped, but I knock out all the turrets by myself, and finish the mission. Ooh, I get a Shivan to follow me around! Neat. I’m running to Warburg next, and I spot Paladin in King’s Row. I can’t pass this up! I first spotted a massive trail of Clockwork running around, and I followed them out of curiosity. I know I shouldn’t be able to solo a purple-con Monster, but what the heck. I hit Elude and jump in after him.

Elude wears off and I run to rest, knocking out a few pesky Clockworks that follow me. I try to trail Paladin until Elude has recharged, but just when Elude is back, he hops over a massive wall. I lost him! Grr! I Super Speed up and down all of King’s Row trying to locate him. How can I lose a four-story purple Monster? I could have taken him, I had his health half down the first time Elude wore off, all I needed was one more cycle. I’ll half to try it in the real King’s Row and see how I do.

Now it’s time for another PvP rumble on Test, this time with teams. We assemble and things go pretty well, as I end up with another Scrapper and a Defender. We take down anyone who comes close, and things go pretty great. MA/SR may not be the greatest for one-on-one PvP, but it does much better as part of a balanced team. Our opponents switch up and get smarter, and everyone gets taken out now and then. Our play is interrupted as some “real” PvPers enter Warburg on Test, and we can tell they are designed just for PvP. We all disassemble our teams and re-from to take them out!

One poor guy sends me a tell: “I. Hate. You.” I had used Teleport Foe to bring him to my side, Cobra Strike to stun him, and then two hits sent him to the hospital. I apologized, actually, because I had done that to him about three times already, and tried to go after his teammate for a while instead. She used Teleport to escape quite fast, so I hardly ever defeated her. Her new teammate, a Peacebringer, used Taunt to keep us off of his teammates, to great effect. A Blaster had spent a large amount of time laying down Trip Mines, and he used TP Foe to bring me up there. All of his bombs went off, with not a scratch on me. “Darn SR Scrappers!” he protests. Heh.

Samuel Tow is on the Peacebringer team, playing his SR Scrapper as well, and I run up and smack him into the hospital. Hoo-ah! Later, he starts reading the newspaper as I whiff on him constantly. I return the favor later, and start reading as he futilely tries to connect, and we’re all laughing heartily (I used Ventrillo for the first time in an attempt to communicate verbally with the others, but my microphone kept cutting out). Team PvP was a lot more fun than trying it one-on-one! I'm on a learnign curve with this stuff, as I forgot to use a Break Free to try and break the Taunt off of me, and I think I could use Brawl more often in my attack sequences. Also, I hardly ever noticed when someone knocked my own toggles off, and I really need to pay more attention to that. After just a couple of PvP events, though, I feel I'm starting to get the hang of things. Yay, I don't purely suck anymore! Man, that sounded wrong...

Write up my adventures or play the game? Write up my adventures or play the game? Grah! Choices…

Entry 109

Play times are few and far between, but I do read about the holiday antics, and log in to receive a jetpack on a couple of my characters. Oh, these were such a great idea! My cousin and his friend stay with me for ten days for Christmas, and they are hooked on the game as well, monopolizing the computer while I’m at work (and often when I’m home!). I manage to get in some time here and there, and start logging in both heroes and villains so everyone gets the jetpack and a badge or two.

I take my Electric/Energy Blaster, Tesla’s Prodigy, out for a spin, and enjoy things immensely, mostly because of the ragdoll physics. At first it takes me by surprise, and I laugh out loud as a Power Thrust and other attacks throw bad guys on their butts. The way they fly through the air, and the awkward positions in which they land are just awesome-fun to behold. It gets me to thinking about some of my other characters, so I switch to Ironic Twist and have my Storm Controller start tossing around thugs with her wind powers. That looks cool too! The new maps and increased graphics and everything really make the gaming an enjoyable experience.

I think I’m going through a phase, as I have almost no desire to team up with anyone. Instead, I end up logging most of my alts in and I start a system of flying to the top of Atlas for the badge there, then swooping over City Hall for that one, and then going for the third badge near the hospital, before going on the holiday mission. The jetpack comes in handy for some missions in the Hollows, so I don’t risk certain death by running a mile through a bunch of purple-cons. I run the holiday mission with Martial Master on Invincible, and enjoy all of the different high-powered villains Arachnos has, which are all very well designed. A couple of them are even creepy looking. I like having all of these alternate characters, because I can see the thugs at the simplest level, and see the toughest they have to offer at the highest difficulty setting with my higher-level characters. It allows me to see the full range of what the developers set up for the game, and test it all at the various different levels. Ooh, and Martial Master finally got the Devilfish badge, running through IP just when the Monster had surfaced. One more badge down!

Diamond Cut logs on to help CRM do his holiday mission, and I still have not done the free Respec on CRM, but the two of us trundle through on Invincible setting with nary a nosebleed. I can only imagine how my healer will be when I make him more optimal with the revised slotting due to Enhancement Diversification, but even unaltered, we’re still pretty unstoppable. I get all but six of my heroes taken care of for the badge and the holiday mission, because I did divert over to City of Villains to do the same for those characters. That place is not mapped out well for the early levels, and a jetpack is a miracle over there! I’ve got a number of characters with names decided and powers set up, but I haven’t had time to give them proper costumes. I had planned to delete the character name and re-design them when I had time to play around with their costumes (and for some of them I’ll still have to do that), but for a lot of them, I simply run the holiday mission to get the free tailor session, so now I can keep the names and powers, avoid going through the character creation engine again, and just go get them new threads. Sigh. So many plans, and not enough time to be truly villainous or heroic…

I guess since a lot of people don't read the forums, but might read the comic, that's a good idea. I'll do that!

For those who enjoy my story-telling, I wrote a short story about a character of Ironik's choosing, since he was the one who designed my nifty avatar! It's here in the RP section:

The Story of the Brother of Minotaurus

Hope you like it.

Background: Ironik chose my forum avatar for me (and isn't it cute?), so in thanks I wrote this short story about the character of his choice. I hope you all enjoy it:

The four Trolls sat around the poker table and put down all their cards. Josack laughed loudly and declared himself the winner, and started raking in the chips. The chips, in this case, were represented by plastic parcels of the drug known as Superadine, He didn’t actually have the highest hand, but then again, math wasn’t really his strong suit. He was, however, the strongest one present, and that gave him a certain latitude with the game.

The laughter died as suddenly as it began as the east wall caved in, flying chunks of debris piercing the card table. Minotaurus burst through and continued on charging, bowling over the gamblers like tenpins. The Trolls in the next room stupidly clustered in the doorway to see what was causing the ruckus in the other room, and Minotaurus ran straight towards them. Following closely on his heals came several of his teammates from Sentinels Prime. Xenozap Kid hurled a bolt of energy at the assembled villains, knocking them all back, setting them up for Victory Streak to race in and put them out of commission. Minotaurus picked a Troll up and threw him full-force into yet another wall.

“Whoa, whoa, Harry!” Victory Streak dropped a semi-conscious Troll and reached out to his friend. “Take it easy!” He stepped in front of Minotaurus and tried to get his friend to concentrate, but he could tell that Harry Tavros was seeing nothing but blind, red fury. Victory Streak shouted out to his allies, “I need a little help here, please!”

Mythyk stepped in through the wall and saw immediately what was happening. “On it,” she replied, and took Victory Streak’s place in front of Minotaurus. “Calm,” she whispered, cradling his head with her hands, each hand almost touching one of the horns on his head. Minotaurus breathed heavily for several more seconds, but the rage slowly dissipated from his face. He gently pulled Mythyk’s hands away from his face and walked out one of the holes he had created in the building.

Xenozap Kid was egging on some of the Trolls as they were carried away by the local police force, and also took the opportunity to make fun of Harry. “Heya, big guy, what’s the big deal?” he asked, slugging Minotaurus on the shoulder. “They’re only Trolls, after all.”

Minotaurus turned his head ever so slightly in Xenozap Kid’s direction, and the Kid’s smile died a fast death. “Gee, man…” He took an involuntary step back, but Minotaurus simply turned and walked off.

Xenozap Kid watched him walk away. “Man, what is his damage?”

Victory Streak walked up to the Kid and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a little personal for him to get Superadine off the streets. It involves his little brother.”

“Oh yeah?” Xenozap Kid asked.

“Yeah. I forget, that was before your time. Come on back to the base, we’ll play the case file for it. You need to be aware of this. You’ll understand Harry better.”

Xenozap Kid sighed. “Okay. Nothing but reruns on TV anyway. Lead on.”


Back at the base for Sentinels Prime, Victory Streak led Xenozap Kid into the library.

“I don’t get it,” the Kid complained. How will reading a book help me?”

“You’re not going to read a book,” Victory Streak explained. He walked over to a closet and pulled out a strange-looking half-globe, and then took it over to the audio/visual terminal and plugged it into a spherical indentation. The viewscreen, which took up most of the rest of the wall, came to life, and started playing what looked like a movie.

“Whoa!” Xenozap Kid breathed. “Far out!”

Victory streak smiled. “A little gift from Druidan. Don’t’ ask me how it works, but he had each of us sit in a special chair, and it pulled out relevant stories that we use as mission files, for newer recruits like yourself to review.”

Xenozap Kid nodded absent-mindedly as events on the viewscreen unfolded. Victory Streak slipped out of the library unnoticed as the scene flashed a date in the upper left-hand corner: April 17, 2004. It was daytime, but raining, and a small crowd was assembled at a gravesite. Standing taller than everyone else present, his horns unmistakably protruding from his head, Minotaurus held an over-sized umbrella over the proceedings, keeping things relatively dry.

The ground may have been dry under the tent-sized umbrella, but every one of the faces of those assembled was wet with tears, as a priest invoked the blessing of God over the departed Tim Tavros. Xenozap Kid realized it was a funeral for Minotaurus’ younger brother. A video montage flashed back even further in time, unveiling a young, lively Tim, gazing up in admiration at a picture of his brother, who looked dashing in his Army uniform. The Kid could actually feel the admiration coming off of Tim in waves, and he felt swept up, as images and emotions piled on top of him like a tidal wave.

Images of Tim conducting a citizen’s arrest co-mingled with a picture of Harry Tavros stalking silently through the desert of an unknown country. A picture told a thousand words as Tim picked himself up off the pavement of King’s Row, a gang of punks laughing at him in the darkness, while at the same time, his older brother held the lifeless corpse of a fellow soldier. Xenozap Kid felt all of it, and wept with despair.

The displays of Harry tapered off, becoming a mindless jumble of unending dry cold and windstorms, interspersed with blurry firefights. More images flashed of him fighting Rikti for the first time, his Special Abilities Unit helping to protect South Korea from the alien invaders. The scenes coalesced around young Tim as he joined a group of other young toughs for mutual protection. It was as if Druidan’s device sensed that this was where the viewer’s attention should go. Tim’s group was beaten again and again, resulting in worry and confrontation with his mother, and ending with Tim storming out of his mother’s house.

Blurry frames passed faster and faster, resolving into:

- Tim again, this time in a dark alleyway of King’s Row, nervous but trying to appear unconcerned, handing over a roll of cash to a Troll that was half-submerged in the shadows.

- Tim rolling up his sleeve, preparing to take an injection of what could only be Superadine.

- Tim dashing out into the street, accosting a group of Skulls, taking them all down single-handed, smiling and flexing his muscles.

- Tim coming down off the drug-induced high, staggering to his mother’s home, using one arm to prop himself up against a brick wall.

- Tim dropping out of high school, his grades inexplicably falling from straight As to an F in English and Math.

- More arguments with his mother over the next few weeks, as Tim develops a slightly greenish hue.

The scenes slowed down again, to an appreciative Xenozap Kid, who was holding his head now in an attempt to stave off a headache. The viewscreen flashed scenes of Tim Tavros, alternating as he developed greater strength, and then fell evermore ill when the effects of the drugs wore off. Slower and slower, the living movie showed an ultimate end to Tim, falling down on his way home, next to that same brick wall. His skin was a solid green.

The viewscreen cut to Harry reading the telegram announcing his brother’s death the very next day, cut to a quickly-arranged flight home that took several hours, cut to Harry clutching family members desperately in an attempt to savor all the love each had for the other, tears flowing unbidden in rage and pain and loss. Cut to the funeral.

Dates flashed by on a calendar, showing Harry in an unceasing funk, brooding about his house, ignoring orders to report back to the front. Commotion outside the house on the fifth day breaks into his somber reverie, and he steps outside to investigate. Rikti again, everywhere. With a savage yell of pain not yet shared, Harry rips into this convenient enemy, fighting to save his neighborhood and friends. After joining forces with Sentinel Prime to help in the struggle, Harry is asked to join the team. Harry agrees and adopts the name Minotaurus.

The images on the screen grew murkier again, with the face of Minotaurus, grimly resolved, promising to rid the streets of Superadine. The screen faded to black. Xenozap Kid shook his head, staring at the blank screen for additional minutes, tears falling unnoticed from his own face. He got up, took the magical hemisphere and deposited it back into the closet. He walked out of the library, a little more sober.

Entry 108

Diamond Cut and I finally get a schedule where we are both at our respective homes. We dive in with CRM and Diamond Cut, just cuz it’s been so long. We head for our first mission as I re-memorize all of my hotkeys, which are very different for my Emp/Rad than any other character, and get turned around on the map. Outside. “I am soooo rusty,” I type in. If we were the type of people to sweat bullets, we would, since we’re always on Invincible setting.

We head in and start to rock. With time so short for play, I have yet to Respec a single character to account for ED, so I’m wondering just how sub-par my guy is, what with all the reduced percentages that things like a fourth or fifth damage or heal SO accomplish now. Funny thing happens. We breeze through the mission like a supersonic jet! We’re both like “No way we cans till do things that easy!” I’m hoping for more free time in the future to actually plan how to do my slots, but the thing is, I still don’t feel broken. Maybe solo might be a different picture, and maybe PvP is a mess, but in a team setting, both of my high level characters perform great.

Then DC sets us for a mission with an AV, and runs off to it. I ask if he wants some teammates, but he wants to try it with just the two of us?! Oh-ho, who is full of bravery now, I wonder? The AV is Anti-Matter! I shrug and follow him in, because my caring about debt left me a long time ago. I have to heal him more often from the debuffs that all the robots have, but we get to the AV with ease anyway. He clicks on Unstoppable and jumps in, as I try top figure out where there is a safe place for me to support him without dying too quickly. Doesn’t work, he notices me fast and takes me out. We come back, and hold him off for a few minutes, and take him down about 5,000 hit points. DC yells out to “run now,” and I turn on blind trust and take off. His Unstoppable drops, and so does he! He had fun just trying toe-to-toe, but we knew that we couldn’t do enough damage to him with just us. Searching for help does no good, though, as the game is basically a ghost town, most likely due to CoV at this point. He decides to “save” the mission for later, and we log, both fairly happy with our performance. It’s good to get back into the groove.

Entry 107

Ooh, an invitation to PvP on the Training Server! I take Martial Master out to Warburg and jump in cluelessly against people like Catwhoorg and Anti-Catwhoorg. To my surprise Cuppa is there too, and is one of the few people I can actually defeat once in a while. There are no teams, and it seems that too few people had villains at a high enough level to test, so it's mostly heroes in a free-for-all. Some psychic Arachnos soldiers get drawn in at one point and take me out, giving me debt. Good thing I'm on the test server! Warburg caps you at level 40, I believe, and I do a double take when I try to use Recall Foe (I got it at level 49 for PvP use, mostly). Gah! It's unavailable! I can't use Conserve Power, Focused Accuracy, or Quickness, either, which means Elude will take longer than three minutes to recharge.

I jump in anyway and do what I can to whomever is closer to me at the moment. After a little while, it becomes apparent that tackling Tanks is useless for me, I can barely dent a Regen Scrapper, and Dark Scrappers somehow eat me for lunch. I get scared a couple times, which is kind of cute, and every once in a while four or five people gang up on me while Elude is up. It's a little funny, because the Regens and Tanks and such that can't be hurt are the ones ganging up on me. I don't need a gang to take me down, they do! Heh.

When Elude is off, I alternate between running away and hanging on the periphery, only running if I attract someone's attention in a serious manner. Teleport becomes my best friend, getting me out of a ton of potentially fatal scrapes. An Energy Melee Blaster tends to edge me out if we go toe-to-toe. He may only have five health left, but he tags me more often than I tag him. Someone else is always quick to capitalize on his low health, though, so I start broadcasting jokes about him getting his corpse off of my corpse. Using Cobra Strike on a Blaster along with Focused Chi, I thought I could take him out, but he held on to come back and defeat me, even as I got a few free hits in on him while he was stunned. It leaves me feeling that SR is a chump set in PvP, with other players having such high defenses, making me miss more and handling it when I do connect, while my health seems to drop at an alarming rate from almost everybody else's attacks. Another flying Blaster tends to hover near a safe zone, and when he is in the slightest amount of trouble, ducks out. Hmm, maybe I should have taken Teleport Foe sooner in my build....

I can see now how PvP can be fun, but this was among a group of friendly people. I can see how multiple trips to the hospital in a different setting might turn people off from PvP. I had no idea how easy it was for other people to punch through Elude. My Scrapper is fast enough that I thought I could take out an opponent before much damage could be done to me, but my many hospital trips educate me. Even with Elude full-up, I was tossed around like a tempest in a tea-storm, especially when I tried to figure out how to hit someone who was using Whirlwind - no luck! By the time most of us have to leave, my Reputation is at 13.9, and I have no clue if that is good or bad. My high level Scrapper is in the same state as my low-level one, though: I had expected slightly better performance. I still enjoy the rest of the game far more, but I am tempted to explore this aspect of the game further, which is good, I think. Next time, I'll have to add Brawl back to my power bars somewhere and actually use it...

Oops, did I say that out loud?

Well, this will make it a ton easier to stalk Athyna now, thanks!

Entry 106

The plan was for MM II to experience more of Croatoa, but the next contact gives him a mission in Siren's Call. New content to check out! With so much time between gameplay sessions and all the updates, I have to sort out how to get to each PvP zone real quick. I take a mission which helps to debuff something of the villains in the PvP area, and then bounce around to the hotspots on the map. I start by engaging the Arachnos troops, all of whom look cool, in my opinion, although the peskiness of the Rikti Drones makes me feel dread when I spot Arachnos drones. They prove to be relatively easy to dispatch, though.

Then come the villains. The area gradually fills up with others who are looking for a fight, and one Brute decides to stalk me. I'm not sure if I'm on his bounty or not, but I don't seem to be able to do much against him. On the other hand, when he connects with me, he can basically two-shot me. I'm a Scrapper, not a Blaster, what is going on here? He pursues me again and gets my health down, and I Super Jump to the exit, resting near the zone gate. He leaps in and knocks me out anyway, and gets zapped by the police drones. Almost all the other villains are in groups, with tons of Masterminds around. I knock out just a couple Corrupters, but spend most of my time running.

The jury is still out on whether I like PvP at all, my experience with it is so small. I have read so much about Scrappers pounding squishies into the sand, but that does not match my experience at all. It takes a lot of hits to take someone down, enough time that they can usually run for safety, or call for help from others who gang up on you. That doesn't even count the Brute I couldn't dent earlier. Is this a common sense of PvP that everyone experiences? So used to PvE that you get a sense of relative deprivation compared to other archetypes? I didn't expect to be uber at level 25, but I did expect to at least be able to hold my own one-on-one with the Brute, since Scrappers are billed as the best solo AT. I am also missing a lot. Ptheh! I detest missing! I'll have to explore this situation further. I was never very interested in PvP at all, but it is mildly fun. I see now that the Arenas were needed to help pit the power sets against each other, and with these new PvP zones, the Arenas will be barren except for the few groups of people that decide to make them a home of sorts. I think the developers could have communicated some of that earlier with the introduction of Arenas, and perhaps there would not have been so much anger at the Arena setup and the battles there in the first place.

Entry 105

I’ve got an hour to myself finally. It only took what seems like two months. Quick! To the computer! I am so rusty it’s pathetic. Good Sport is level 8, and he comes across an orange-con with a couple yellow-cons in a warehouse mission. I can dispatch a yellow-con, but the others are too much for me to take out before I’ll run out of Endurance, so I run what I think is far enough to rest up real quick, and I’m not even close. They catch up to me, and I get turned around on the map, thinking I’m running towards the exit when I’m really just running into a dead end. I feel like such a chump when they knock me out. When I pull up the map, I find I really was at the entrance, but I couldn’t find the right door to click on to save my life. Literally! No doubt about it, my Defender is squishy.

I have run into a new problem as far as teams go, but it’s partly just my state of mind. I want to join a team or even a super group now more than ever to help pass through the lower levels faster, but I know I’d be logging on once every two weeks, and that’s no good for maintaining pace with your friends. I only manage to do two missions as it is this time around, and I already have to log to go do real world stuff. I’ve got to organize things different so I have more than one hour free at a time. Then we can go back to solid teaming!

A few nights later, I’ve burned through all my new comics, and I’m feeling excited. I have free time to play! MM II goes out for a stroll, and gets directed to Siren’s Call. I take a mission at first to debuff something for the villains, and level up to 25 on a Crane Kick that dispatches an Arachnos soldier. Sweet! Just in time too, because the boss is a red-con when I run into him, and I have to run away to rest at first. Upon exiting, I decide to try some PvP.

I’m pretty sure I suck at PvP. I took out one guy the whole time I was there, and spent the rest of the time coming out of the hospital. One Brute took away half my health in one punch, and then followed me all over the map. He took me out while I was resting near the Steel Canyon entrance, and then he got zapped by the police drones. It definitely seems like a place where you need to go in with a team.

I get a blind invite around midnight, and decide what the heck. I head for Croatoa, and find the missions are set for level 32 villains, and the team leader was just inviting anyone he could get his hands on. I shrug and jump in anyway, since this is my last mission for the night. We take on a bunch of purples and surprisingly, no one dies the first fight. We have a grand old time, and I think I died twice, but with a whole new zone like Croatoa, I need something to slow down my leveling already anyway, so who cares? My one complaint is the glitch that stops us from rotating the camera view now. I wanted to take a picture of MM II from the front, with his new holiday jetpack! I log into CoV to play my first villain after that, since the jetpacks will make it a lot easier to get around Mercy Island. I’m level 1 and I can fly! Bwah-ha-ha-hah! Merry Christmas everybody!

[ QUOTE ]
Where did TPull go?

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I'm around, but I literally have not played in a whole month. Yuck! I just used my new house for a housewarming party one weekend, a wedding reception on another, and the family gathering for Thanksgiving, all in-between a business trip out of town for a week. I need to clone myself so I can get in some play time...

Entry 104

My contact, Susan Davies, always says, “Are you ready for some action?” whenever I go to get a mission, heh. On one she says, “Do whatever Larry asks,” and I’m just hoping it’s not Larry Flynt. I notice Archery is slow going, because the damage is not all that great, but I can stay alive through almost anything. A combination of the Glue Arrow and Entangling Arrow gives me all the time I need to take out higher cons. From the way things are designed, I can tell they want me to be playing on a team, though.

Perez Park has almost nobody in it, so I try to find a team in the Hollows, but by the time I get there, there is no one looking, and nobody wants a hand. It’s a little bit of a ghost town. I try to see where the limits are on my Defender and take on a whole pack of Outcasts. I whittle them down a little bit, but have to run and heal. When I come back again, they make mincemeat out of me, and I only managed to take down one of them. Definitely can’t play like a Scrapper with this one.

Someone calls out for a team and follows me a mile to our next mission, and I level up just inside of it. He stops about a fourth of the way into the mission and just stands there. Did he go afk? I guess so, but I can’t just stand around and let him be a sponge. He doesn’t do anything while I take out a whole mob, so I have to kick him. Ptheh! I’m not sure what happens to the spawns inside a mission if you lose a member while it’s still going on, but I take care of the rest of it solo. Looks like I’m back to a bad teaming phase.

The mission is a mile from the Atlas entrance, so I send a tell to Taxibot Medley, who broadcast that he was on duty earlier. My first use of the Taxibot service! Oh, that was nice! I love it. I head top the trainer and settle for Combat Jumping for level 8. None of my other attacks for my secondary are even available yet.

A blonde is in danger right next to the door of my next mission in King’s Row, and I simply can’t ignore it, even though everything is grey to me. I keep thinking that with bases to maintain now, we should get some small amount of Influence, or a Badge of some sort, that acknowledges that we still stop to help out the common person, even when we get to the “cosmic” levels, and normal street crime normally wouldn’t make us pause. I notice I can’t really use Combat Jump in combat, the End drain is too high, and I also need to use Rest quite often, so it’s a good thing it recharges faster now. I’m on a timed mission, and I get a tell asking if I’d like to group. Sure, anywhere from when I logged on over an hour ago! I tell him I’m on my last mission for the night, so no. Ptheh! Murphy’s Law strikes again! And me going out of town all next week means I’m gonna have withdrawal symptoms, too.

Thanks. I've been figuring that I should throw in any villain experiences here too, once I get going on that. Otherwise, there would be many extended lengths of non-posting if I took a villain from 1 to 40, with little to none "hero" adventures during that time frame.

I almost feel guilty as it is with my reduced playing time. My entries have caught up to real time, so I only have new things to relate when I get to sit down and play now!

Entry 103

I came across a MMORG reference on Wired.com, and thought it was very interesting. game addictions
The author mentions coming across a class in a game he could not control, and that frustrated him, “tainted” his love for the game. That seems like what some of the game changes here have done. When people master something, whether it is software, hardware, or a computer game, they become used to doing some of the things automatically, like driving a car. If my car was updated, however, and I had to re-learn how to drive every six months to a year, I can understand how frustrating that would be. I haven’t hit that point myself yet, but I can see how some of the powergamers who have put an uber amount of hours into the game might.

There is also a mention of people playing more when the regular, real life seems a little in the dumps, which matched my thoughts exactly, from an earlier post. My playing time has gone down dramatically since real life has gotten busier, more fun, and more interesting. Some of that isn't all fun, as some of my time is also eaten up by pesky things that go wrong, which can be frustrating as well, but that’s a different story.

I log onto Virtue server and play around with Good Sport, to see how the new power sets look: Archery and Trick Arrow. I’m told the accuracy for Archery is among the highest, but I still miss more than I’d like. I love the animations, though! The Devs did a good job on that. I am not used to being so fragile again, so by the time I get up to level 6, I die twice. I didn’t want the debt reductions to take place, but I’m not going to complain about not getting debt here. The low levels are slow without the travel powers, so I’d have to say I side with the Devs once again on this too. Less debt equals getting closer to a travel power!

One of my defeats is to a level 7 Clockwork Lieutenant that cons orange to me. He’s in the red, but I keep missing. What happened to my accuracy? Grr. Although, I do look cool when I am lying there in the dirt, still clasping my bow… I haven’t been using my Glue Arrow though, so I use that on him next time, and pin him down in it more with my Entangling Arrow. I also keep on Sprint to back up faster until they are well and truly caught, since they always seem to get to within melee distance by the time they are ensnared.

My other death comes from having my Snap Shot on auto-attack. I usually don’t do that with my characters, but the animation and recharge are so fast! One other time, I’m typing things up while Good Sport is auto-running across King’s Row, and I switch back to find him in the middle of a fight with three Skulls! He didn’t auto-attack them, but once he was attacked, he seems to have fired right back as a response. I take them out without dying, phew!

Even the sewers look cooler with the new computer! I am so enjoying the visual spectacle that is the game, I have to say I just relish all the neat details I am able to appreciate now. But I think I officially detest escort missions. Have I mentioned how much I hate downtime and time wasters? My first escort mission does not tell me how many people I have to rescue, and my third hostage does not respond to me when I save him. I end up escorting two others out at separate times, turning around and heading back in. The third guy disappears for a while and then shows up in his original spot later. For all that, and I get 40 xp? Boo! Hiss!

I swear the game knows when I Alt+Tab to type. I auto-run to a mission after leveling up to 7 (in Atlas Park, where it should be safe). When I shift back to see how close to my mission I am, I’m fighting a couple of green-cons. Obviously, this game does not like to be ignored!

Okay, since Issue 6 and Enhancement Diversification are out, it is time for a status update. First, the good news: this build actually still works for solo and team play! See my latest journal entry for the play-by-play.

This is partly because this build has always been offense-driven, and all the reductions to defense only help to reinforce my personally favored hit-them-hard-and-fast style of play.

That said, I will also be adding on a post-ED build that gets more mileage out of the Enhancement slotting, taking into consideration the new penalties associated with them, as well as a re-examination of the powers in both sets, since they have both undergone some changes.

In the meantime, if you're pressed for time like me and would rather play than do another Respec, just be aware that you can still go through all your missions on Invincible with the original build, have fun, and come out on top.

Entry 102

I take Martial Master out for a spell to test first-hand the changes that Enhancement Diversity have done to my character. Looking at his slotting, I notice that I never have put any enhancements in my final slots for Lucky or Agile. Not too big a deal, but I laugh anyway. Off to the Shadow Shard! I change my settings to Invincible first, and head to take a mission from General Hammond, since SR is particularly vulnerable to Rularru eyeball villains.

Inside, I have to pop Elude early, and it wears of against the boss. I don’t chew as much candy as I should have, and I bite the dust. Okay, let’s try that again, only I’ll actually keep track of my health this time. The damage resistance buff was completely worthless, by the way. Keep in mind, I have not done a Respec, my build is the same as it was pre-ED:
original build

My second time in, I pop Elude before I get back to the boss, but I take him down with little difficulty. Cobra Strike comes in handy against the Watchers, I must admit! Mission complete comes soon after, and my initial thoughts are:

1) The Invincible setting is now a little harder
2) A teensy bit more damage would be nice, as many of my opponents end up with a sliver of damage left that is slightly irritating
3) Elude was necessary, and the down-time is now too long, and I’m slotted for what used to be perma-Hasten and four recharges in Elude itself; the timing definitely has to be re-thought on that one
4) One death on an Invincible mission is not bad

Time for a second test. This is my first time trying to use the marker lines that guide you to each jumping-point across the Shard, and it’s a little hard. I had an easier time locating them when hunting on my own almost! I suppose it will just take a little time for me to get used to them. I have to teleport for my last jump, since some of the slides are on different levels, which does not show up on our two-dimensional map very well. Those really should have been designed to be a little bit simpler. The Shard is still mostly deserted.

The first mob takes my health down from 1472 to 665 without me using Elude. Is that the correct ratio for me solo against level 53s? It’s definitely ‘harder’ in the sense that they cut through my defense like Swiss cheese, anyway. If this happened to be a different character, I might not be so iffy on it, but the very concept of SR is not to get hit. Without a Watcher nearby, I feel they really shouldn’t be connecting as much as they are, with three passives and Focused Fighting fully slotted (the last two empty slots would account for maybe 3.3% of Ranged and AoE damage at this point).

I also notice my Endurance is running lower than usual. I’m running Focused Fighting, Super Speed, and Focused Accuracy (that one with three Endurance reducers in it), and I had to hit Conserve Power a little earlier. The reduction they did to our Endurance costs still makes Stamina a requirement on this particular character, that’s for certain. Without Conserve Power, I would run out of END in a fight with just those three toggles.

This time I knock out a bunch of level 52s non-stop, and then come across some 53s, conning red to me. I pump one red, one yellow, and one purple Inspiration, pop Elude, and run in. The mob is a Watcher, two Brutes, two Wisps, and I forget how many Natterlings. They all go down like pie. I run around and come across a cavern of four or five Watchers all clumped together with a few other types scattered about and dash in. I seem to be frozen for an instant while chasing after the first stunned Watcher, and then Elude drops. I pop a couple greens as I run away, all of their attacks hitting me after I’m quite a distance away from them, using Super Speed.

By the time I’m finished typing, Elude is almost fully recharged, so I go back to find that big group and decide to start using my Teleport Foe power finally, since I have been ignoring it for so long. Instead of turning Elude on, I use TP Foe. I miss the first time, then turn on my FF, Hasten, and Focused Accuracy, and I snag him. It’s the one I injured, and I take him out, but another level 53 red-con Watcher and a Wisp have spotted me, and they whomp away on me. No candy using here, and no Elude, I decide. I take both of them out too.

Six left in the cavern, three of them Watchers. Using TP Foe, I take out the three small fry, although the Wisp does fly a ways after I stun her. That part is really irritating; I wish they would change that one aspect of the game. A Watcher tags me once as I take out the Brute, and my TP Foe fails on the Watcher too, but it does not attack me again. TP Foe again, and another failure. The third attempt works, and I take down the Watcher easily, but then go check my slotting to see what I had put in TP Foe. One Enhance Range, nothing else. Maybe I need an Accuracy slot in there? Sigh, I also notice my final, fourth slot for Focused Accuracy does not have a To Hit buff in it yet, that means I never even bothered to stop at the store. I think I was going to just let the desired Enhancements drop in the next missions I did, but I have had no luck with that so far.

The two +3 Watchers that remain fall like a sack of rocks, and the mission complete bonus takes away my debt. My second thoughts on ED for SR are:

1) I did have to change my tactics and start using TP Foe, which is good. Charging blindly in, heedless of the danger is gone, unless I have a big storehouse of candy I’m ready to use.
2) If they want me to vary things up, I wish I didn’t have to Respec just to put an Accuracy slot in TP Foe, because that’s the only change I really want to make right now.
3) The Enhancement drops suck. I never get anything I can use! heh

Next, I need to test the changes out in a group. It only takes a little while to assemble some level 50: Marricon, who also happens to be an SR; Blast Lord, a Blaster, ‘natch; Daemonwell, a Dark Scrapper, Misha Kahlahan, a Controller; and a level 45 Rad Defender, Naked Girl’. We plunge into the Battle Maiden AV mission, at first surprised that some of the mobs are so few. It’s a disgusting old-style blue cave mission, which I think most of us hate. Naked Girl’ gives me some timely heals as we go, as I decide not to turn on Elude at all for the regular minions.

We stumble across a level 52 Battle Maiden as we are split up, near the top of the multi-tiered cave, and she takes us down one by one, taking me out with one hit. Gee, did I mention how useless the new damage resistance to SR is? Not a total group wipe, but close. We regroup and take her again, just the six of us. By the time I’ve typed in that I will lead off with Elude, Marricon has already done it, heh. We take her down before my Elude wears off. The team was awesome, what can I say?

My third observations about ED:

1) It was telling that there were no Tanks; there were several comments about how Tanks were now unplayable.
2) I don’t need to have Elude up in a team setting on Invincible as often as I do solo.
3) We went non-stop from mob to mob for so long, I had END issues, although I had enough CABs with me to make it a non-issue this time. There are some possibilities for more downtime in this area, unless I re-slot with END reducers in place of damage.
4) I can keep my slotting exactly the same and run Invincible setting missions solo or in a team, and only run into the danger of dying in all the same old places I used to.

Initial conclusions? ED does make the game harder, and I still think SR should have a higher defense, but it is playable, it is survivable, and I am still having tons of fun. The problem is, I will have to test out all my other characters to see how ED has affected them, since the changes are so drastic. However, my favorite character can essentially stay untouched, if I want him to do so.

It’s funny, I was sure I’d be forced to do a Respec, and I still might, but right now all I need to do is switch out a damage Enhancement or two for Endurance reducers, and I’m still good to go. I think I am -by definition now- playing with a “gimped” build, and I came through just fine. Yet again, all the doom on the boards does not seem to apply to me or my character. I have to reserve my final judgment based on how this has affected all Archetypes, not just one power set, but so far it’s looking okay.

Entry 101

Definitely have the itch to play City of Heroes tonight! It feels so good to log on, dear friend, I have been away too long! The vibrant colors and sounds that my new computer system is able to display really impress me every time I log in. My heroes’ costumes look much better than I originally thought they did. MM II has a mission on the board, so I head for Skyway… via the wrong Metro line? I have definitely been away too long.

I take out some Family and some Tsoo, eating candy whenever my tray gets full, and never fall below half health on the Heroic setting. I stop and pull up my Enhancements screen to take a look, well aware of all of the Enhancement Diversity controversy, and realize I may not even have to Respec. Five slots in Stamina may as well stay there, my three main attacks are six-slotted with oneEnd Reducer each, I would just switch out a damage for a recharge, or maybe an extra accuracy. Three slots in Focused Fighting, and one slot everywhere else. Meh, forget the Respec, this should be good to go!

This is one of the advantages of playing so many alts, I don’t have too many high-level characters that will need a Respec. Also, I do not have the experience of what those characters would have been able to do before all the nerfage, so my experience with them as I go along will be fresh and untainted by all the capabilities that were there before, with the original power design. I feel bad for people with six or seven level 50 characters, but that pales beside the envy I have for them being able to play so much anyway (I kid, I kid)!

I get a Warrior ambush at the entry to the next mission, which I like a lot. I tend to keep getting a slow-down, where my character chases a bad guy, and both he and I slow down, while the other bad guys notice me and attack. I thought they fixed that a long time ago. Ptheh! As I two-shot a white-con and one-shot another with a Critical Hit, I tend to think I should up the difficulty level. As much as I don’t want to out-level things, I have to admit that I have gotten too good to play a Scrapper on Heroic for any length of time. I still enjoy the graphics, the powers, the bad guys, all of it, but I can only stay on Heroic for the earlier levels. I’m glad that is the basic level, there are other Archetypes that I prefer to play on heroic, at least in the beginning, and I love the option we have to change it as we feel like. I wish we could have more things like that in the game.

I have absolutely no idea how well my defenses are doing. I’m running Focused Fighting and Focused Senses non-stop, and I haven’t died, so that’s pretty much my barometer for things. Did I die? No? Then Issue 5 isn’t too bad for this character. I finish my mission easily and then run for a Hero Corps Analyst to move me to Unyielding before I hop off to the third mission. Three orange-con Tsoo at level 26! I take them out, and am still hit for 70 points of damage. Invisible enemies? I run out to reset the mission. That’s not a fair test! Ah, two level 25 Warriors show up now. That explains why I was down in the red on health. I run to another mob of the same size, and quickly have to eat half my candy to stay alive. I get through it and find another mob quickly, testing to see if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. There’s an actual chance of me getting knocked out here! Sometimes it’s fun to set things on Heroic and just coast, but tonight this is more my speed.

Another mob has several Tsoo, and as I take one out, a Sorceror teleports in. I get down in the red on health as I take out two more, so I run around the corner real quick, and tackle the last Green Ink Man as he follows. I’m still in the red, but I leave my candy alone. The orange-con Sorceror appears, and I know he can take me out, but my luck is here tonight. I don’t touch my candy, and I’m down to about 119 out of 698 health, but I take out the bad guy! Woo hoo! Ooh, looky, I need to sell already…

I’m out of green respites, but I manage to take down the red-con level 25 boss, but I don’t wait before charging on to three more mobs. As I take out the orange-con Sorceror, an Ancestor Spirit, the last guy as far as I can see, nails me from behind right as I was trying to activate one of those Resistance Inspirations, which I am actually not too thrilled about so far. I would much rather have my old defenses back. To the hospital it is, finally. I think the extra debt from dying on an advanced difficulty setting is more than offset by all the extra experience I am earning. And to be fair, my girlfriend called while I was fighting the red-con boss, which may account for some of my health being gone. I should just keep the freaking headset on at all times, mutter mumble, grumble, gripe…

I head back in and run into two orange-con Warriors, and take them out without activating my defenses. I realize I have three more hostages to find, so I try to search the lower levels some more, and come across two more orange-con Ink Men, both of whom I also dispatch without activating my toggle defenses. Ptheh! It’s disgusting when I can’t notice the difference between the number of times they hit me, whether my defenses are active or not. I still feel that the changes to defense were not well-thought out regarding SR. It seems almost as if the developers have thrown the very concept of SR out the window, and I’m not sure how we’ll ever get it back, so I just play with what they give me. I do feel a little nostalgic for the older days before the defense changes, though, I must admit. At least for my SR. There should be a noticeable change when you activate two of your primary defense powers, that’s all I’m saying. That’s all I have time for, so of course I get invited to a Respec mission, and have to decline, as I sign off.

I plan to change the difficulty setting lower next time, just to try out each level. I’m used to Heroic or Invincible, not the ones in-between. I’d like to see how my character handles each of them. At level 24, is it normal to run Unyielding? If you are solo, should you try Invincible at this point? Fellow readers let me know, there are still many areas to this game where I have no reference point! I only know that I can handle any difficulty setting in the 30s, but for the mid-20s, I have no clue.

Entry 100

100 entries and more than a year later, and I’m still around typing this? I’m not sure what should be said about that, but it’s been a blast. I noticed something interesting about my play: it mimics how I read my comic books. Let me put it this way: when September 11 hit, and everything after that, it seemed like the news was 100% bad. All blood, all the time. Delays on my new house, my relationship with my girl hitting a stopping point, etc. I noticed that the worse real life got, I was buying and reading more and more comics. I was also playing the game more and more. My personal life wasn’t actually bad, just a couple of speed bumps, really. It was my perception of the rest of the world that was having a “bummer” effect on me.

For the past couple of months, things have been different. Real life has been great personally, with success at my job, loving my new house, and a brand new girl that I spend inordinate amounts of time with, and actually enjoy the heck out of it. I stopped watching the news, so that probably helps too. But it also means that I don’t devour all my new comics the night I get them, and it also means I haven’t been playing the game much at all. I think after a year, I have reached a new plateau anyway in the game, so to speak, where I’m not eager to play every single night. So if my entries slow down, it’s because we’re just about real-time with them now, and there is less to type up, just so you know.

That said, Red Haven is leveling up his Blaster Zedd every time I blink, and he invites CRM out for a stroll. We have a team-up with Steel Justice, SCi Con, Akira Urameski, and Flurb-Skrull, and we rock the house for a couple hours. Somewhere in the middle, our good buddy Boogie Monster joins the fray, and it’s like I haven’t been away for a month after all. We take down everything in our path, moving fast and joking faster. Since Zedd is a few levels higher than CRM already, I get to make jokes about how I’m doing four points of damage to the boss, and when I hit Aim, it’s seven points instead. Woo hoo! I make up for it with Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost spread around liberally, a constant Recovery Aura followed by Regeneration Aura, and healing whenever needed, which isn’t so much, considering we’ve got six people on the team. Since I can’t contribute much to damage, I stick to healing and buffing, and the longer we play, the better our teamwork gets. As we progress, I have to heal less and less, which leaves me more time for typing in various inanities. Somebody says CRM is now his favorite goofball in the game. “Ahem! That’s MISTER Goofball to you!” I tell him. “And smile when you say it!”

A few nights later, Zedd calls me to duty again, this time accompanied by Voladure, Obeel Tank, Gained Freedom, Tempest Shocker, and Frozenboy, the last three Blasters like Zedd. Talk about not needing a healer! I start launching chats with, “Can somebody get hurt a little? Please?” Just a little bit?” We do have a half-group wipe on Infernal the first time, and after a couple are down, I feel an instinct to flee. I ignore it and jump in the middle, throwing heals and buffs out at record speed. A couple people get away, and I bite the dust. Debt is really meaningless at this level now, I feel. I die so rarely, and as a matter of fact, the debt is gone by the end of the same mission. I’m not sure why Statesman keeps nerfing debt whenever he changes the game, but I’m out-leveling tons of content these days, and part of it is because of all the reduced debt changes that have been made the past few issue updates.

Gained Freedom has to split, but Sci Con has come along again, and Flurb-Skrull is back too. Frozenboy leaves and is replaced by Harry Habanero, just as Tempest Shocker has to leave. We go through a couple more missions, and find a couple tough battles where people are actually getting hurt! “Now this is more like it!” I say, healing left and right. Someone says they’re happy I’m getting some exercise now, heh. Zedd has some strange ability to find good teams, almost every one of them in the past few days has consisted of great players with maybe one exception (and we won’t mention who that is).

It feels like we’re moving faster than ever before, and all the complaints on the boards about Issue 5 seem totally unsubstantiated, whether I’m grouping with Zedd (and not feeling un-needed as a defender, as even my Clear Mind starts becoming useful again), or traipsing around solo with Ultra Meltdown or MM II at the upper and lower 20s, I seem to die rarely and do just fine, whether it’s with an SR Scrapper, a Blaster, or whatever. It makes me decide to hold silent on all of the Enhancement Diversity (ED) fervor until it goes live. All of the updates so far have not ruined the game for me, although I will finally have to do some Respecs with ED coming along. The message boards have been lit up with it, and my biggest sympathy is for people with two or three level 50s that have to Respec yet again, but I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. The public relations has not been the best with this upcoming change, but I’ve seen Statesman’s quotes twisted around until they look like retarded pretzels from another dimension, so I don’t quite have the feelings of betrayal that others have expressed. With these types of changes, the only wish I have right now is that moving Enhancements around when doing a level 50 Respec was a little less time-consuming. It takes time away from me actually playing!

Entry 100 State of the Game: still having fun, wishing I had more time to play, but I have to admit, the “newness” has finally worn off, and many aspects of real life are more attractive than playing a game these days. I may finally be growing out of my second childhood. I’ll be splitting my time between the new CoV and CoH, and I am excited about exploring all the changes, including the ones that come with CoV, especially the prospect of “changing sides” for a few of my characters later. I may be a different breed from the average computer gamer, because I have no desire to switch to any other game (no offense to them, I’m just a little too addicted to this one). I’m here for the duration!

Outside the Journal Commentary

For those who are interested, I am also doing beta testing for CoV, and you can read (a much smaller journal) here. I must admit, I was surprised, but very happy to see the redname comments so fast over there, and was greatly impressed by the encouragement I got on the replies and private messages, from players and Devs both, so I give a big thank you.

This brings up the question of whether you want me to meld my CoV experiences here with my CoH journal, or keep them separate. To avoid cluttering up the journal, please vote here:
Include CoV Journal w/ "first-time MMORG player?" if you want to keep this about CoH entries only, but keep in mind, that may mean an extended absence for me from the CoH boards if I spend a lot of time playing with the new toy.

Entry 99

Man, real life takes up a lot of time once in a while! I’ve only been able to play an hour or two in a whole month, and next week I’m out of town for four days. I finally get a couple hours free at one time to log in and see how I5 really looks. Personally, I don’t like the $ sign for the stores, but that’s not too big a deal. I’ve forgotten where each character is and what they were all doing, so I log in MM II at level 24 and just plug away at my available missions. I still can’t believe how much better the game looks with my new computer. The difference is impressive, and really adds to my enjoyment of the game. Less downtime, too! I make a game out of switching over to type up my adventures while Super-Jumping to each new location.

Dark Astoria for the first time on this character! I enter a Tsoo mission and take out the boss fast. Copperhead is an orange-con Lieutenant, and he goes down easy. I’m remembering from reading the details that defense has been lowered, and we now have more damage, which is exactly how my original MA/SR was patterned. Cute, I was actually trying for a defense-heavy build this time around, but oh well. I have to defeat all, so I run through the rest of the warehouse, kicking butt and not bothering to take their names. Lawyers’ll probably have them out on the street again in a couple hours anyway.

I wish I was a number cruncher sometimes, I can’t remember the average damage that I used to do, but I can waltz through white-cons easier than ever before. I catch a thug in a Crane Kick as he tries to run past me, and the camera angle swivels and follows him as I catch him in mid-stride. I’m not sure if that’s a new feature or not, but the game is starting to look more and more like a good action movie! I run right into a mob of two orange cons and more than six Green Ink Men. At this level I would expect to get slaughtered, usually. I receive a green candy, but hold it, even though I’m in the red a lot. I take out the last Ink Man, and have health of 115 out of 698. To be honest, although I do find it fun, I’ve sort of been here and done that already. I was trying to figure out a way to get hit less. Since Martial Master specialized in hitting the enemy hard and fast, I find with the changes, MM II can now hit harder and faster, and even up against nine or ten allegedly-superior foes, I’m still coming out on top. My own preference would have been to go a different way, but it doesn’t ruin the experience for me or anything. I’m having fun just trying to figure out how to adjust to the new changes and get an internal feel for how my character handles. I must admit, though, with these design changes, MM II feels like more of a sequel than ever!

There are some very interesting delays in the Tsoo Sorcerors. One tries to teleport to me, and it looks like he rematerializes right where he was, only half into the floor! Another time I’m kicking him, and the camera view shows me MM II from the front, and the Tsoo all the way down the corridor behind me. In the meantime, the stupid Warriors keep saying to kill me. Don’t they know I just get sent to the hospital right away? They do know they’re in Paragon City, right? Heh, I actually punch a button for Cobra Strike once. MM II didn’t take that power!

Another mob seems to connect almost every time, and I use two greens and still end up at 132 by the time I finish all of them off. Is that lower defense-related, because the first mob had higher-level opponents than this one. I decide to test more, to see if I can tell how low my defense really is, compared to the normal times when my number is just plain up, and the villains hit me every time. The next battle I don’t even turn my defenses on, and two yellow-cons get me down low.

Oh wait, there’s the real boss, Copperhead! Meh, he goes down like a blonde on prom night – er, I mean, like a bag of rocks. Time to go sell!

My contact advises me to get some teammates for the next mission. Yeah, right! Inside the mission, I pop my first Sturdy candy to see how that affects my play. Gonna have to play around with that some more to see how I want to fit that piece of candy into my play. Sometimes I pop it, and the bad guys stop connecting, and it disappears before I get to the next mob, so I can easily see how it will be less “useful” in terms of getting actual use out of it, as opposed to any of the other candies. The only one I use less is Awakens, and Break Frees for my SR.

Red Haven calls me up, he’s heading home and wants to play Diamond Cut and CRM. I don’t have enough time left for that, but he begs me to log in Martial Master so he can help clear a mission for Zedd. Poor whiddle wimpie Blaster, can’t handle a widdle diffculty? (Actually he can, he just doesn’t want to. I tease him anyway. It is what I do.)

Entry 98

August and September make for terrible months in terms of free time. I do manage to log on and create a new Defender on Virtue server called Good Sport (who says all the good names are taken?). A lot of the powers seem to duplicate other stuff already in the game, but the animations are great. It will be hard to please every player out there, as many have different tastes, many have different archetypes and want more things for the archetype they spend more time with and so forth, but the Devs are definitely trying to add content and powers and keep things fresh. By the time I manage to get in some real time, probably everybody and their dog will have completed Croatoa by then.

Taenia has created a Blaster called Zedd, and levels faster than anyone has a right to. I mention he played a Regen when they were considered the best, then an Invul after the Regen nerf, and now he’s playing the flavor of the month with the new buffs from I5, but he insists it’s just a coincidence. I give him a hard time about it anyway.

Real life takes over as I move to a new house, and all my plans, carefully geared to minimize moving time and maximize spare time to get back to playing instantly disintegrate on the first day. It’s not so bad at first, because the difficulty with finding teams was making me get a little tired of playing, so after three weeks I log on to create Good Sport, who is still in the Tutorial, but I had fun designing his costume and setting him up.

Zedd reneges on an offer to help me clean out my old garage to keep playing a Respec. It would not have been so bad if he hadn’t made the offer to help in the first place, but it stings a little, as I expected him to actually quit something digital he could go back and do any time, as opposed to leave me hanging in real life. (It’s not my fault he was still in the Respec into the evening as his sucky group had a group wipe). He recognizes that, and calls me the next day to apologize for being out of line. We were planning to do the Eden Trial Saturday, but I know I’d still be a little miffed about the incident, so I let him know it’ll be a few days before I want to team with him again.

In my younger days something like that would have stung much more, but I’m old enough to know all I need is a little time to get over my disappointment. Other people might have been clueless and continued on, so I’m glad he was so fast to call and apologize. We skip Saturday, but I’m already calling him to plan for the shortly-announced Hero Duo contest. We take our pictures of Zedd doing a mission with Ultra Meltdown, and I miss the posting deadline by ten minutes. Curse Central Time!