I'm getting pretty grumpy with my defender. As I've told Juli, I'm halfway through my last story arc of the the tier and I am only two blurbs into 39. The way I am being forced to group makes me unhappy, because I want to have a choice to group or have some solo time to myself. Last of all, the second-class defender feeling now that I do have to group. (Empempempempempemp.) I am picky, I want to group with people who share my play ethics. I have an SG of ESTers who disappear long before I log on. I don't want to be constantly doing the soft version of plevelling for what I won't put down here.
But let me say this: plevelling a first character is a mistake. If you have felt you've seen whatever you wanted to in the low levels, want to get a boost up to the range you find interesting, go ahead. (Plevelling a certain of a first AT is a mistake too, imho.) But I cannot understand how someone would just give up their own storyarcs if they've never seen that content before, just give it up, just like that.
I like giving someone a free boost, there are always rough spots. Even one mission sidekicked up can provide a healthy dose of xp and reduce the feeling of grind, while gaining the novelty of seeing new things. I enjoyed those sessions when I got sidekicked up in an SG outing, long ago.
But I don't enjoy babysitting a blaster who has no concept of aggro management. Yes, aggro management. A blaster is tricky to play, and by level 30 they've picked up some form of aggro awareness. This type of awareness is only gained by both soloing and teaming against things that make the blaster say "ouch" when he gets whacked. But it is ok to throw a fireball on a group of salt-crystalled grenade launchers because your friendly controller will just lock them down again, and of course he has bubbled you, and your local debuffer has debuffed them to the point when they miss anyway...
I don't know why I'm complaining though. Maybe I don't really have the right to, since I went herding last night. For the first time in my CoH career, I farmed a mission. This is on Assail, by the way.
As Juli pointed out in her post, the players around me seem to have gone stupid. SOs plastic wrappers should come with a little warning: "WARNING: May cause stupidity".
I log on, I get pulled into a team. The tank warns me first-hand it is invincible. Then he picks up another tank, a scrapper, a peacebringer, and a defender. Sure, everyone knows how to play. But...except for the scrapper, everyone seemed to have a tunnel vision. Forward! Forward, barge forward!
PB gets spotted while in the air by mezzers. Mezzed. He grouptalks "held". Everyone went on. I was the only one who rushed over, o2 boosted him until he got free, and then...he flew off? What makes him think that as a controller I can handle the mobs he aggroed? I slicked them, snowstormed and held them...and what? Brawl them to death? I ask for help and finally my teammates turned up, with some admonishment on not splitting up. OK, next time I just continue superspeeding forward and let whoever gets held die.
Unfortunately I'm too nice. We come up to a dais (one of those council things), and once again, the PB gets spotted. There's something about hovering above steamy mist range in visual sight...or something about blasterish aggro-radius. I have no idea -- I have not played a Kheldian. But he got machine gunned. People stood around, oblivious. I hovered up and held the guy. And of course, machine gunner's cohort start shooting at me. The response I get? I get blamed for hovering up and aggroing them in a sacarstic manner.
So everyone jumps up onto the dais, except that...well...there is stuff on the ground and I was getting shot at...then I wasn't, and I noticed the scrapper's hitpoints plunging. I looked down and tabbed. Shit. Scrapper is fighting the boss (purple con), a Lt (purple con) and a grenading minion (red con). I drop down, try to help him out. Very hard. O2 boosting and spamming holds that barely hit the boss, and if they did, washed off like water. (25 Invincible mission -- 28 base boss). We inhaled our lucks and respites, and more, and the scrapper finally grouptalked 'some help with the boss pls'. And finally empath appears and peacebringer appear.
It's ok, not everyone can spot the boss. Only scrapper and controllers have that Speshul Ability. :P
Then another warning about not splitting up. Excuse me? So I just let the scrapper eat dirt while he saves my ass by distracting the boss? (Then the boss willl come after me and the PB who were hovering above him of course.) This time I was fed up, and I went 'Because the scrapper was saving the backliners from the boss grenades?' (or something like that).
And the empath went: we're good. i was saving all of you.
ROFL.
ROFL.
This empath's ego is bigger than his heal. Mister, I play defender all day long, and you suck. A good defender watches the backlines. All the time things would get past the tanks and start whacking at the peacebringer (AoE nova form generates hate like a blaster). They would run in from the back. I never saw him looking back and tossing a heal to the backlines. This is ridiculous, it shouldn't be like this. I have a tiny little miniature endurance sucking heal known as o2 boost. I shouldn't have to be using it. When I held the random people that make past the front lines, this empath just stands around. How about blasting it and getting rid of it? Next person that guy's going to make for if he ever gets loose is me. I want to say "You realise that defending means blasting stuff that passes through the frontlines so they don't splat your blaster/controller, don't you?". Staring at the tanks/scrappers who are doing fine in front is not defending. Was he masturbating about his leet xp when that scrapper was red?
Or does he not have a secondary at all? :P Maybe I'm spoilt by the empaths I group with regularly, who do their share of damage and still buff and heal.
We have two tanks. What must I keep telling them "guy left behind", "guy at the back"...or they'll just barge forward, leaving me with one or two ice-cubed guys. Ok, sure, I can brawl them to death. See you in ten minutes.
Immediately after the mission, the scrapper quit the team without a word. I can't blame him. I left with some excuse.
This isn't even a unique incident. What's going on with the level 20s? Everyone seems to have taken a dumb pill, put blindfolds over their eyes and earmuffs over their ears. They want to kill, kill, kill, xp, xp, xp. I've grouped with more intelligent level 5s than I can count than these type of people. And all the while they yell at me for running off on my own or casual aggroing or what the heck. I guess I should act just like them, barge ahead in the Elite Way, and anyone who falls behind and gets into trouble I will pretend I do not see and let them die. Eh?
Logged on later, and got picked up by a level 29 herding team. Stayed.
Invul tank to herd an outdoors map. Fire tank to burn them down. Empath defender to heal/buff them. I was sidekicked up and given a token spot for boss control since I was grouped with the fire tank before we went into extreme herding mode. The second empath defender had no clue what was going on, and he was puzzled why we didn't click the blinkie.
I knew, but I didn't care. These are professionals. That first team was just a pathetic pretender. There was something extremely vindictively pleasing about watching an invul tank herd about 100-200 Pantheon over a map, bring them over to the back of a rock or hillside, and slapping down ice-slick/freezing rain on all of them. And then the ftoomsh-ftoomsh of fire melee. And then everything collapsed in a mound of smoking, charred corpses. It's like frying beans.
I did this twice, then got bored of it, thanked them and left for breakfast. They were still going strong when I left. The other empath was of course deeply puzzled by why we would not click the blinky and left the mission, resetted it, and the the entire mission again. We couldn't explain it...it was the unspeakable -- Either you were in and you knew, or you didn't. He probably caught on eventually.
But I got my level, and now I have glacier. I am pleased. No doubt it needs slotting, but I will happily mass hold anything that displeases me now. I don't need to kill it. I'll just hold it so it doesn't hit me...and go off invised. If people are so oblivious to it that they don't listen to me telling them about this group held needing killing...hey, when they become unheld, it's not my business.
On the good side, some people from the Core were logged on and we had a bit of very funny supergroup chatter. I like these guys already. But then maybe so few people appreciate my horrible puns and have horrible puns of their own that it's just a punny feeling in my head.
1 comment:
39 is a painful level. You want to know what I think? It’s their game design showing, since max level used to be 40. So the arcs start running dry, 39 seems as good as 40, no need to hurry up to that stage. Hopefully Croatoa and I5 will be out by the time I get to that range. :P
And as for pleveling, I’m sorta of the Samuel_Tow board guy philosophy, just not so extremist. I don’t approve of actually going out to look for it and if it falls into my lap, I can only take it for so long before I give up.
I really don’t understand pleveling in the CoH context.
Sure, I was a rabid pleveler in RoD, but you see, RoD has an endgame – and nearly every avatar there was interested in playing the endgame content (ie, endless raid/runs) with level 50s as tools. Meanwhile, the RoD classes are pretty much cookie-cutter with no ability to change your powers (and primarily useless powers at that) so there’s no Oooh feeling when you hit a level, unless it’s a crucial one like circle at 25 or something. So leveling and enjoying content is not encouraged in RoD (especially since you can enjoy nearly all content as a level 50 safely – they are changing this with the enforced levels, but there needs to be more before you’d want to level and see the world the proper way.)
You plevel to make level 50 tools so that you can run endless big mobs. Especially since ridiculous things like Seth and Satan/Furies requires two neut thieves, mebbe one dev thief, neut vampire (and a spare if yer the sort to die early and often), mebbe a cleric for spelldown, the works. So yea, I can understand why people plevel on RoD. You want the product so you can get down to the “meat” of the game – which was rewarding once before it paled into insignificance because of our revelation.
In CoH, what the heck are you gonna do with your level 50 toons? Run Hami? Jeez, you can’t even multi them. Unless you buy two or more accounts. And then you can’t multi them effectively anyhow.
CoH doesn’t have endgame content. It doesn’t need endgame content, no matter how much these refugees from Everquest-type games want them. Because they never climbed the ladder of desire so high that they realized it doesn’t go anywhere, they are still trapped on the lower rungs and wanting it. I rather they use the other MMORPGS to come to that realization, and then come to CoH as a refuge. (I know a few board people are this sort, they are the ones who share my kind of outlook, uberloot isn’t everything. Not many casual EQ-type players have realized this yet. Story of the world – everyone wants more money, more power, more prestige. And then the celebrities, CEOs and presidents realize it isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. Sure, some of it is good. Excessive is too much. Balance in all things, thank you.)
If you’re just the sort to get thrills from the dings, you may as well run Progress Quest. It’s free.
More fancy powers to play with? For about 30 seconds before you realize you don’t know how to use them – or all you’ve got to use them on are AVs and Shadow Shard missions (ouch, or yawn) or grey con minions. (booooring.)
Then comes the whine for…we need more end-game content! (So we can plevel past them and say that we’re leet, then we wonder what the heck now. MORE content plzplz11one11)
Sometimes I think these people (Achiever-types mostly) need a GAME OVER – YOU WIN (You beat the game) THE END screen. Then they can close it as a chapter in their lives and pick up another game to beat. Otherwise they hang around at the top, wondering what next, and desiring more and more to beat.
Maybe unlimited levels would suit them, in the style of Diablo and Nethack too. I don’t mind, actually. As long as the higher levels couldn’t impose themselves on lower level’s enjoyment, I say all power to Mr Level 9992 on Hardcore mode, fighting endless mobs.
Yeah, I don’t understand this terror of debt, and the desire for tons of xp. I’m always worried about how much damn xp I am raking in, for fear of outleveling stuff I haven’t seen yet. Maybe down the road, I won’t care, but then, imo, I shouldn’t be here any longer either. If the content becomes too old, and I no longer enjoy the journey, time to find a new game. Just like RoD became too boring, the content was known already.
The thing that I think would make me stay in CoH when the content gets old, is the randomness of the pickup teams. The way different people fight and stuff. The unpredictability aspect. But I can only tolerate that if my pickup team mates are intelligent enough to try and work together. If they are going to be morons, then hem, nuh uh. I may end up retiring as a lowbie altholic playing weird experimental builds instead of meeting with all these crazy powergamers at higher levels.
And call me strange, but I like adding sparks of positiveness to CoH. I think there’s so much negativity around already. If I can make one or two people in my pickup team have fun – real gut roaring fun – like the infamous duo of Gruthak and the Don, I think it’s very rewarding, and it gives me real enjoyment as well.
Great, I might end up doing a comedic supergroup at some point in the distant future. :P
How’s The Comedy of Terrors sound as a SG name?
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