Author: Zubon

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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

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Work vs. Game

In-game, we do not have five-hour meetings. When we get a large group of people together for five hours, we are going to slaughter things by the thousand.

In-game, we do not spend the first half hour of our gathering engaging in a clever ice-breaker, to help get those creative juices flowing and put everyone in the right mental place for a free-wheeling discussion. We spend the first half-hour alt-tabbed, reading web pages while waiting for everyone to get to the right zone. We may also be discussing character builds or the latest test server notes on Teamspeak. (If anyone has a way for me to alt-tab from life during clever ice-breakers, please post it in the comments. No PDAs.)

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Ethic: Prisoner of the Amarr!

EVE[EVE Online] Tonight, in EVE Online, Ethic took a dangerous mission through Amarr space. The Amarr are a society of cruel slavelords, known to steal ponies from one-legged Caldari orphans and choke them, just to watch them die. There is reason to believe that Ethic has been taken captive, and an Amarr-programmed clone has replaced him.

If there are any odd posts here or hostile actions in EQ2, do not say that you have not been warned.

: Zubon

Un-nerf

cov[City of Villains] I recently posted about a stealth nerf to stealth, which is fun to say. They are not going through with it. The reason for the nerf hitting test was to reduce risk-free xp. The reason for its leaving was well reasoned posts from players. And it was a “stealth” stealth nerf due to an ongoing internal documentation issue.

I thought this one needed an update, not just a note in the comments, in case you had been thinking badly of Cryptic. Corrections need to be visible on blogs.

: Zubon

Stealth stealth nerfed

cov[City of Villains] Every game has the mission of “go click on x.” City of Heroes/Villains does that quite a bit, usually combined with “and beat up some stuff.” Actually, that summarizes the gameplay of almost every MMO: run, click, kill. I have a discussion of that I occasionally toy with. Anyway…

The latest patch keeps you from clicking glowies while stealthed or phased. That is, you cannot steal things while hiding. You must stop hiding, defeat anyone who can see you, then go back to sneaking around. This is one of those interesting decisions that makes sense in some cases: how do you pick something up while intangible? Actually, heroes partially unphase all the time. Can you just pick something up and hide it under your invisible shirt? I recall Harry Potter doing that several times. Wouldn’t someone notice your opening the chest and taking things out? Okay, you have a point there.

Continue reading Stealth stealth nerfed

Tuesday Night Strike Force

cov[City of Villains] Easily the best part of returning to City of Heroes/Villains has been our supergroup’s Tuesday night strike force. This has become a regular event for the past couple of months, and I have seen almost all of the City of Villains strike forces. We will probably pick up the strays in the coming weeks, and maybe we will hit some City of Heroes task forces.

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UltraCorps open alpha (limited offer)

[UltraCorps] For those interested in browser-based games, Steve Jackson Games just announced that UltraCorps will be having its first multi-player open alpha test. There will be slots for 393 players for a 20-day game. You can follow any of those links to get a bit more information.

This offer expires at 10:00pm, January 2, or when all 393 slots are full. If you are interested and miss this test run, more tests are likely to ensue before UltraCorps goes live.

: Zubon

EVE Gets Serious

EVE[EVE Online] “Human Cattle” is a tier II Gallente mission chain in EVE, and it has some of the hardest missions I have ever seen. Granted, I am not optimized for heavy combat, but that ambush that started with blowing off half my shields was rough.

The missions get progressively harder, such that I was frequently destroying one target, fleeing to repair my hull, then going back. Then I got to the last area. Those big red crosses are all really big ships. The smaller ones I can solo, given time, if there are only two or three of them.
Human Cattle 1 My ship is at that angle because I am getting out of Dodge. And now the real picture…

Continue reading EVE Gets Serious

Same Character, Different Game

EVE[EVE Online] I seem to have three characters, which I play across a number of games. As I have mentioned, I tend towards healers and support classes. In City of Heroes, I have two level 50 Defenders, and my highest level villain is a Thermal Radiation Corruptor (buffer/healer). I have the name Zubon reserved as a Defender on almost every server. My second character is a mage/blaster/whatever they are called in your game: the glass cannon. My third character is the pet class. Ideally you combine them, so my Dark Age of Camelot character was a Theurgist (nuking mage with buffs and quasi-pets).

Flying around EVE Online while my superhero wife worked on hitting level 50, I contemplated EVE drones and CoV Masterminds, since both of my current main characters in CoV are Masterminds. When I am not playing the game where my henchmen destroy my enemies for me, I play the game where my drones destroy my enemies for me. I seem to have turned the two most polar opposite games out there into the same game. That feels really weird.

On the other hand, I am posting during combat, so there are advantages to playing this way.

Sweet Mother of Pearl!

EVE[EVE Online] I logged back into EVE Online tonight. I do not know how much has changed, but the changes to my character since I last logged on are disorienting. I used to hunt pirates almost entirely with drones. Now most of my drones will not fit in my ship, and my skills changed so that I cannot control as many. So that is a switch. More surprises to come as I poke around, I suspect.

Anyone know a good ship with a 125 m3 or larger drone bay? My ogres want to go back to work, preferably without investing a few months of skills in being able to use them again. I guess I’ll need to remember how these guns work. Hmph. I mostly just used them to aggravate far off enemies who I did not feel like chasing: shoot them once, they come closer, and my drones eat them.

I guess this is what happens when you leave a game for six months. Did the Iteron Mark V used to hold more? I recall its holding much more cargo than a Mark IV.

: Zubon