Category: City of Heroes/Villains

When you unsummon your pets on a Robotics Mastermind, they may announce that they are initializing homing beacons. If you think you just saw a robot say, “I loves me some bacon!” it is probably time for bed.

: Zubon

Why “Fluffy Bunnies”? Because just one fluffy bunny would not be terrifying enough! Besides, it creates fun messages. Enemies cry in terror at the approach of Fluffy Bunnies, and you can imagine how that goes in PvP. Anya would be proud.

After four Contemplations worth of squishies, I finally get to a melee character … who is also squishy. What is wrong with me? I know that comics are full of people in spandex, but we could use a bit of body armor out here!

Continue reading Character Contemplations 5: Fluffy Bunnies (Martial Arts/Regeneration Stalker)

A “proud nail” is one that sticks out and snags things on an otherwise smooth surface. The D&D designers use the term to discuss game design elements that stick out and catch your game. D&D 3E’s grappling rules are one of the best examples. In City of Heroes, we have the Carnival of Shadows, perhaps the most ill-conceived faction in the game.

At first blush, hey, evil carnies, cool. The look is great, with harlequined ladies and men welded into their helmets. They are the big psychic group, with some of the more challenging bosses in the game. Interesting visuals and unique abilities: excellent. On the villain side, they have their own section of Saint Martial, and Vivacious Verandi is one of the most entertaining contacts in the game.

Continue reading CoX Proud Nails: The Carnival of Shadows

My wife and I borrowed a friend’s account, and we made new heroes. Then we went out to beat up Hellions and Clockwork. Take that, evil! Paragon City has some new level five heroes!

My lovely wife does not play enough to justify a second account, but we conveniently have friends across the pond who go to bed in late prime time. Or very late, as I glance at the clock. Bother, I have work in the morning. This is another reason we do not play together too often: we like each other a lot, so we get swept up and forget to do things like sleep.

: Zubon

“So what do you do for fun?”
“I pretend to be a shape-shifting alien squid who mentors superheroes by standing inertly while flaming monkeys eat interdimensional gangsters.”
“Buy me another drink.”

: Zubon

City of Heroes added a referral program to invite your friends back, so I thought I would mention it. If you have been gone for 90 days or more, a current player can invite you back; when you pay for a month, you each get 15 days. The existing program, to send a free trial code (and the sender gets a month if you eventually buy and subscribe) continues. Since I am a current player, if you were thinking of coming back or trying it out, let me know, and I will send you a code for a couple of free weeks (and exploit you mercilessly for my own free play time). I can see the otherwise-invisible e-mail field if you leave a comment.

: Zubon

The, ah, the title pretty much says it all. Weapon customization, two new powersets, flashback system, new and rare IOs are the main highlights.

There seems to be less activity on the villain side, which surprises me given that I usually characterize City of Villains as what City of Heroes would have been if they had had another year to work on it. The classes have better solo-ability, the zones have more of a story to them, the story arcs tell flavorful stories that do not drag on unnecessarily, and the content is spread over fewer zones.

But now I am back in Grandville. Grandville is in many ways a triumph of story over gameplay, like the Shadow Shard in CoH’s endgame. It is built as a fortress, complete with high walls, guards on patrol, and gun turrets. It is a vertical zone, taking advantage of CoX’s 3-D nature, so the zone works upwards as well as outwards. These are positive, until you need to navigate. Imagine having an instance door several hundred yards above you, with enemies seven levels higher than you on patrol in front of it; some of those enemies can see through stealth; most of them have some form of crowd control and/or anti-jump/fly ability. They will still be there when you exit the mission door, and because my latest character is a Mastermind, I always exit missions defenseless and needing a few minutes to resummon and upgrade. Being two-shot for the crime of leaving a mission is unfortunate.

The more interesting content requires more dangerous paths. Anyone can get endless newspaper missions: those doors are usually easy to get to, and you can swim to the mayhem missions safely. You may have more difficulty getting to contacts who give story arcs when they are standing on ledges or under structures where higher-level enemies roam. The new Rikti War Zone is the only alternative to Grandville, and you are again on repetitive missions once you run the half-dozen arcs there. In CoH, you never need to go to the Shard, and Peregrine Island is about as linear and 2-D as it gets. The only problem is the occasional newspaper mission door that is at the feet of the 200′ tall rock monsters.

I don’t recall if my first level 50 villain had problems with Grandville. My second was an invisible teleporter with status protection, which is about as safe as it gets. Maybe I just need to re-learn how to run in panic through a zone where I am no longer the big dog. I need more panic buttons on my Mastermind.

: Zubon

Hitting the wayback machine, I was reminded of a bug from the early days of City of Heroes. Damage resistance debuffs also debuffed resistance to damage resistance debuffs. That is, if I hit you with a 30% damage resistance debuff, not only would your resistances drop, but you would have a 30% larger effect from the next damage resistance debuff to hit you. Take Enervating Field, a damage resistance toggle, and have two characters drop it on the same enemy. Tick tick, tick tick, and it is stacking by multiples, not by adding. Some people still have screenshots of doing >10,000 damage in one hit after letting the enemy sit there with several debuffs toggles going for a while.

: Zubon