Inspiration strikes

Part of the curse of having played City of Heroes\Villains is that I frequently get inspiration for new characters in the most unlikely locations. The one below came to me in a supermarket with the exclamation “I just had a great idea for a new character” despite the game being closed for over a year.

I have only just got around to designing the character inspired by a box of dark chocolates, I present to you ….
Violent Creams ( sorry, not sure why the video is blurry for the first 6 seconds)

Thank goodness for Titan Icon that at least allows me to design the would-be characters and I’m very thankful for it.

I keep a copy of the game installed just for playing around in the costume creator, I know many other players can’t face keeping the game installed which is understandable give the history.

There is nothing quite like a concept character to drawn you into a different play-style and that is where the game excelled. I have mentioned before the choice of primary and secondary power-sets gave a level of freedom that more recent MMOs haven’t come close to matching, combined with a lower number of character slots means trying different combinations isn’t always easy in these MMOs.

Do you ever roll a concept character just for giggles? Go with a build that is against the grain?

#Characters #Blaugust #CityOfVillains

Group with me at your own risk

My build is my build, group with me at your own risk. My favourite grouping experience was as a Corrupter in City of Villains, my secondary powers were Kinetics and at level 20 you unlocked a power called Speed Boost.
This power was very useful as it granted targeted allies, increased speed / increased recharge / increased recovery / resist slow effects, as powers go it was an all-round bonus for group members.

However the drawback was that the person using it could not cast it on themselves and being a player that often soloed, I only really took powers that I needed for my build to work. So I didn’t pick this power up when it unlocked on reaching level 20 as it was never needed by me and I had more important powers to unlock.

My teaming experience came in the form of a PuG invite looking for a healer. “I can do that on my head” I thought and joined up with a group of 3 other villains looking to cause mischief. We grouped up and entered a mission and started wailing on the enemies, my heals covering the team in a green glow, no-one dies and we were making good progress.

Eochai, king of the Fir Bolg during the 2010 Halloween Event
Eochai, king of the Fir Bolg during the 2010 Halloween Event
For those that have never used the Transfusion power, it’s a difficult heal to get right as you have to target the enemy to use it, thus they have to alive and your group members have to be within a certain radius to get the heal effect, one rouge member wandering away could result in them getting splatted. That was until one team member demand that I use speed boost, of course I couldn’t as I didn’t have the power in the first place. The holier-than-thou team member goes off on a huge diatribe about how everyone that uses kinetics should have it.

During the midst of this rant the other two member remain silent, perhaps acclimatised to their friends lengthy outbursts, one goes AFK and asks the team in chat to wait for them to return. Our ranty friend of course doesn’t see this message and charges off headlong into more enemies about 30 seconds away from our static position.

Of course without the rest of the team to back him up he is taking damage as the enemies slowly whittle his health away and the last message I read before leaving the group was him asking for help, then on noticing the last afk message, asking if anyone was back. I nearly doubled up laughing as I left him to whatever doom he’d incurred.

As a warning to others I updated my player listing to reflect that I didn’t have Speed Boost and not to ask for it. This appeared to deter those that only wanted to team for 1 power I could bestow on them and the quality of grouping afterwards was much improved.

So as indicated in the first line, my build is mine to decide what to use or how best to configure my hot bars, so quit telling me how to play my damn character.

P.S I did get Speed Boost after respecing but often kept that same warning message up just to avoid teaming with planks.

#MMO #CityOfHeroes #Blaugust

There is nothing quite like

Today is the 10th anniversary of the launch of the City of Heroes game. Sadly the game

The game is remembered by the fans, the community still talk about the game, memories of it and what the future holds on sites such as the Titan Network and Facebook groups, not forgetting the chatter over at Missing Worlds Media or the recreated official website over at http://cityofheroes.ca

Only yesterday I had a conversation about not yet finding a substantial replacement for the game, even in it’s basic format there is still nothing comparable on the gaming scene, whether single or multi-player format.

Following on from the previous Lore Q & A the 2014 edition has been completed and is filled with some great information for fans of the game.

#CityOfHeroes #CityOfVillains

Exemplar Performance

It’s been 16 months since NCSoft pulled the plug on the first and IMO best SuperHero/Villain themed MMO, there is barely a week that passes without me hearing a small reference to that game in one shape or another.
Admittedly it’s more often than not @FlyinPinkMunki or myself lamenting users on mumble about the fun we had or the bizarre costumes and builds that would spring from your imagination. But excluding us lifetime fans of the game, the recent TESO launch has fling City Of Heroes into people’s minds again as the age old MMO problem of out levelling creeps into the forefront.

The mentoring system in City Of Hereos/Villains is often held up as the gold standard in how to do this correctly. The earlier system was configured so that in a team someone could be sidekicked/lackeyed to a level 1 below or equal to the player who was the exemplar/malefactor.

Best of both worlds

This worked both ways, so a level 42 character could team with a level 16 character, the sidekick would have their level raised to 1 lower than the person exemplaring, so in this case level 41. But if the lower character needed help the higher character could be the sidekick and their level lowered to match the lower level player, loosing any powers selected beyond that level so that balanced was maintained.

coh_lackey2

This system worked very well, but had some limitations, for example if you had one high levelled character but 2 lower levelled characters, an uneven number of exemplar to sidekicks the system broke unless another player of a similar level was found or the higher levelled character became the sidekick to one of the lower characters.

Evolved

In the later days of the game the system was altered, so that any mentoring was performed to the level of the group leader, thus you could have a high levelled leader at say 32 and up to 7 sidekicks that would be raised to fight at level 31 (or lowered down to 32 for higher levelled characters).

This allowed for more flexible team combinations as you didn’t need to worry about an odd number of players or having staggered levels. Although some power-leveling folks were annoyed as in the previous version you could trick the system into paying out huge benefits if you had a player 3 levels below the leader, and that player sidekicked another player who would get a hard fight but high XP.

#CityofHeroes #CityofVillains #Mentoring #TESO #ElderScrollsOnline

1 year later

Arachnos

A year ago today NCSoft pulled the plug on the first, biggest and best Hero/Villain themed MMO. I have had not dealing with NCSoft since then and aren’t likely to do so given their portfolio of games does nothing to interest me.

I look at the market offerings of current MMOS and the classes are mundane and pedestrian, all builds are the same, at level 2 you get this power, level 5 that power. Yes there are some exceptions that buck the trend,but these are few in number (TSW?).

If asked my goto Archtype in Villains was a Corruptor,  the mixture of the powersets always lead to some interesting gameplay. In order play every combination of just that one Archetype you would need over 100 characters, it was as diverse as they come.
This lead to your character feeling a little unique off the bat, but then the power selection and how you configured each power, granted further opportunities to craft a avatar that you had a hand in shaping. And of course what is a superhero/villain without a costume to match:

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A year may have past, and there are a number of players that have maybe found a gaming home elsewhere, some may have backed the Project Titan folks on kickstarter, many stay linked via the #SaveCoH hashtag on twitter.
I think we are all still longing to roam that virtual world again, to take in the music, the sounds of a city and it’s people, water lapping against the docks, listening out for the Cow while enjoying some skiing (hehe). These are small and silly things that were common place yet are held quite dear now.

Thanks to all those players that I still ponder about when I think back to Random TaskForces I was part of.
Thanks to the Titan Network for holding out as a bastion of all things CoH/V.
Thanks to the Community.