Category: City of Heroes/Villains

.

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.

.

Double XP Weekend of the Living Dead

Most of my supergroup is on leave from City of Heroes. Three or four people are still around, but many are visiting WoW and Nostale. Some of those losses could be permanent. I find myself playing more flash games lately, but I am still in Paragon City. This four-month gap between issues is a problem, particularly when the big items in the last patch were Ouroboros (recycling old content) and ultra-rares (encouraging mass farming).

Friday kicks off a double-xp (and influence, infamy, prestige, and maybe drops) weekend. I expect to see many old friends back, and I expect a lot of character progress. My wife is heading out of town, and I will be cooking extra tonight so that I will have leftovers for the weekend.

As usual, if you want a trial code or invitation back (former subscriber gone for 90+ days), I can send them.

: Zubon

Adaptation

Why would you live in Paragon City? Walking to the green line involves passing three cyborg hoodlums, a group of vampires and werewolves, and sometimes alien invaders. Your best case scenario is to carpool with the corrupt corporation that sometimes abducts citizens for experiments.

Parents seem to have adapted; I see many people named “shakedown victim.” In the “A Path into Darkness” story arc, one hostage leaves you a note:

Grabbed by jack-booted thugs. Luckily, ready for that. Paragon City and all. Check with your friend, sent message regarding where to find me.

Of course, that immortal citizen is frequently taken hostage, so he should be planning ahead.

: Zubon

Conventions of the Game

Pulling is inherently a weird notion. You have to wonder about the guy next to the one who was pulled. “Did Bill just get shot in the shoulder? Meh, I guess he can handle it.” These aren’t villains, they are horror film extras, wandering into the woods one at a time, where an insane gang of SCA-wannabes lurks.

That is far from a new insight, but other oddities struck me. City of Heroes enemies have relatively small aggro and pursuit ranges. I regularly run past enemies with no stealth on, since they will shoot maybe once or twice before wandering back to their spots. We call it “Tanker stealth.” “Intruders! We’re under attack! Ah, eff it, he’s way over there. Not my job.” This is why the archvillains lose: their henchmen are lazy and stupid.

I was playing my Sonic Defender tonight. Staying out of that aggro range, I flew merrily above my enemies’ heads to get to their drug stashes and boss. Sonic Defenders have huge, spherical force shields. “Guido, did you see a giant orange bubble zip by us? No? Maybe it’s just me.”

: Zubon

City of Shuler

Did you know that Douglas Shuler plays City of Heroes? Being nerds, you might know him best as an artist from Magic: the Gathering. Serra Angel was one of his. He recently posted a link to a poster he made. He made 3D models of all 41 members of his supergroup, and posed them on the Atlas Park steps. Remind me to recruit a professional artist to our supergroup. The best we have is someone who teaches pottery.

: Zubon

Issue 11.5 Rocks

There is a bunch of stuff between Issues 11 and 12 in City of Heroes. A big batch just hit the test server. Notables include displaying real numbers, rather that “moderate damage” and “slow recharge”; faster leveling, particularly in the 13 to 20 and 36 to 50 ranges; big tweaks to MoG and Rage; the end of in-game e-mail spam (but we will still get many /tells); Assassin Strike boosts so that Stalkers are now desirable for archvillains; and fixes to many bugs, including the one that makes my Acid Mortar shoot me in the face.

As others have noted, some of the recent changes to the game have been counteracting old design decisions, sometimes in a clunky way. The game had no loot, and now it has several versions of salvage, all separate from recipes. The game had almost no numbers, and now a system is being made to display them.

If this excites you, my set of free trial/invite-a-friend-back codes are almost all refreshed, so I can send you some free time.

: Zubon

Updated to strike out things that died in testing; maybe Issue 12.

Selling Slots

Kill Ten Rats authors have previously come out for selling RMT fluff, and have featured games that use that funding model. What games will sell you more character slots? Guild Wars does. Sword of the New World effectively does so, selling slots for in-game currency that you can buy with meatspace dollars.

For the player, this offers convenience and potential savings. All your characters are associated with one account, so you have one monthly fee, you need not re-buy the expansions, and any special account upgrades (RMT fluff, veteran rewards, etc.) apply to your new characters. Keep all your characters on the same global name in City of Heroes.

For the developer, this has some advantages over trying to sell second accounts. You have fewer of the problems that arise from people using multiple characters at once, many who will not but another account will pay a one-time upgrade fee (maybe multiple times), and you get that money now. Policing for discipline is easier when the player is not a hydra. The only ongoing cost is storing more characters per account (perhaps not insubstantial).

Let’s say $5 for one additional slot per server, and you must buy at least four at a time to prevent transaction costs from eating the money. Alternately, you could have several subscription options, some of which offer more character slots or other premium services, but you would need to decide what to do if a guy with a 16-character account wants to cut back to a non-premium account.

: Zubon

Loving Lady Grey

Last month’s searches included someone looking for Lady Grey porn. This struck me as odd. I have never had fantasies about the head of CoX’s Vanguard. Maybe folks are going for the schoolmarm/librarian, “take your hair out of that bun and let loose” thing, or maybe it is because she can summon tentacles.

I developed a different sort of fondness for her running her task force recently. I decided that I sold it short in my previous discussion of Issue 10, so I want to discuss the awesome fun. The task force uses interesting new concepts to make otherwise standard content interesting and rewarding. Spoilers abound below the fold.

Continue reading Loving Lady Grey

Character Contemplations 6: Furious Badger (Katana/Super Reflexes Scrapper)

She fights for ponies This Scrapper is loosely modeled on my wife. My wife can be a very angry badger. Furious Badger was the name I picked for my first beta character, and she was intended to be something simple and safe my wife could play. My main priorities there were passive powers (fewer buttons to worry about) and high survivability. I went with an Invulnerability/War Mace Tanker. That character, particularly solo, was very weak. I became very tired of six-shotting white minions, so switched to a Scrapper for live.

I do not think that I picked Katana to mirror my wife’s Scrapper, PrettyPonyLady. She went with Invulnerability, and I took Super Reflexes. Both sets have four passive powers; combine that with Fitness and an auto-power, and you need not think about one-third of your powers. Convenient, that.

Continue reading Character Contemplations 6: Furious Badger (Katana/Super Reflexes Scrapper)