The Solo Option

I do hope Statesman never takes his balancing too far and remove all ability to solo, ever. Because right now, the thought of soloing and making plans to do some stuff solo is all that’s keeping me sane and not throwing in the towel for CoH. (Or any other MMORPG, for that matter.)

I completely appreciate the fact that some ATs are out of whack. Overpowered compared to other primary/secondaries. This can sometimes create a sense of elitism, of, gee, I can do this on Invincible, why are you so wussy that you are doing it on Heroic? A sense of, I’m too good for you, I need xp at a faster rate, this mish is too slow/boring, yer a gimp and a leech…of second-class superheroism. If we could ever get rid of it to the extent that everything was more or less equal, it would be great – but it’s also a pipe dream, in my opinion. It’s like enforced communism. Sounds great in theory, but very idealistic, and impossible in reality. Once you compare two people or more, you’re bound to have some stuff less equal than others.

But the fact is also that forced teaming is not a viable solution. If you make it so that everything requires a team, and the team requires rigid roles like meatshield, damage dealer, support, healer, etc…then the game turns into those cookie cutter mmorpgs out there like FFX (apparently) and Everquest (also apparently.) It will attract those gamers who can accept that sort of cliched mindset, and turn off the others who were looking for something new and novel – like me. Like many casual gamers, I suspect.

There are some of us who find that the beauty comes from versatility. That every build can be viable if you use some common sense and group tactics and teamwork and persistence and determination and strategy and a basic sense of “what the heck, let’s try it out and see.”

The phrase Kelizendis and I thought up to describe this was “There’s more than one way to cook an egg.” Cooked eggs are tasty, and they can be fried, boiled, poached, steamed, beaten, baked, mixed with other ingredients, made up into an omelette, deep-fried, sunny side up, over easy, over medium, even eaten raw, heck whatever, etc.

This is why Ass Clowns is so fun. Because our builds are so completely weird. Yet we can manage some seemingly impossible feats – because everyone is mature, fun-loving, and willing to try new things with nary a concern about debt, death, defeat, or gain of xp/levels.

That’s why playing in a controller SG is fun. That’s why lowbie teaming with altholics who can actually play and speak English is fun. And so on.

What’s not fun is the recent trend we’ve been seeing on Justice – at least over the weekend on my level 25+. This is the leetspeak trend of moron world. I keep trying to beat my head in on the desk every time I think about it. Did someone release a whole pack of kids over the weekend or something? Is it WoW wearing off their welcome and now they’ve charged into CoH to try and powergame their way past it?

I have been trying to treat the 20-25+ world like the lowbie world I’m happy with, and it’s not working. LFG is like an invitation to either a silent powerleveling team churning through missions with xp flooding in because of one good fire tank…or a total lack of team tactics leading to selfish solo scrapping and eventual disaster – at which point, the whine starts up. We need healerz!11!one!1.

Oh my god. I can’t take this any more on the tank. I feel obligated to save the team from disaster. I taunt everything to try and save them, and basically, I get overwhelmed without any controller or defender support – save for regular recovery aura and sporadic healing when the emp def actually notices me. Or the emp def actually tries, but he walks into an AoE (hitting like a downpour since I’m taunting, right?) trying to save me and he drops, and then shortly after, I drop too.

I feel paper thin. As a STONE tank. Because we’re fighting +4s because everyone wants leet xp and PL and they’ll run away if god forbid, they ever see even-cons or yellows. Dey are teh invincible, y’see! Punchpunchpunch. Completely oblivious to the fact that the guy is shooting the tank who is steadily getting deeper into trouble. Just very slowly, so it’s not so obvious that I’m sucking fumes on respites, my earth embrace is not recharged, my end is running dry and I cannot unroot to get away otherwise I will be held a dozen times over, have my toggles dropped or lose my regen healing which is only barely holding its own.

I cannot tank without any debuffs just yet. It makes my life so much easier as a tank when I have defender and controller support. But even then, we can’t kill mobs alone, we need the damage dealer to actually pay attention and unleash damage hell at the correct time. But the damage dealer is too used to just going off and doing his own thing, and it’s damn frustrating.

No one listens. I have no clue why. It’s like these sudden earmuffs have gone on about –2 to lvl 22 and the magic SOs. Anything I say in a team is pretty much ignored. It’s like I’m invisible. And hello, I’m your tank. Seems like it’ll be in your self interest to actually listen when your tank is saying something. I know you’re so sick of fire tanks whose ego is larger than their burn patches, but I really don’t say much…unless it’s important.

And when your tank has the team leader star next to his name, that’s also saying something, I think. Your tank is not your pet herder that’s gonna give you leet xp without risk. At least, not this tank. The sooner Statesman does something or figures out a good plan that’ll nerf this kind of stupidity right in the bud, I will be groveling at his feet and maybe even send an extra cheque along to help compensate for the whining biatches who will be whimpering that they can’t PL no more.

Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has a solution for this kind of thing. Except maybe, nerf people.

The average level of intelligence is actually frightening. That’s why you have such things like the Darwin Awards (be it in real life or CoH style) and the whole pick up group thread.

Oh, and my job allows me to meet a heapload of kids of the younger generation, pretty much a random sampling from all over the country. Might I say that I am truly, genuinely scared and wonder what the heck parents have been doing to their kids to make them so damn brainless? It’s prolly the TV as babysitter, I think.

On the whole, there are about 10% very smart kids, who sometimes are overspoiled and act like egoistic brats. Maybe about another 20% of kids who can get along and manage passably well in school and communicate well. 50% out there are just difficult and noisy with ADD to boot, their attention span lasts about 15 minutes if you’re lucky, and some crave attention so badly they will do anything to get it and the last thing they care about is either learning or cooperating with their friends/basic teamwork. They are used to maids waiting on them and me, me, me.

Maybe as they grow up, some half of them might gain some maturity and get scared by their exam results enough to work hard at it and do something with their lives. The others, well, might not get anywhere except in a janitorial role. Or some other job they are forced to do because they have no other alternatives and their parents told them to do this, so they’ll hate themselves, their lives, the world, etc.

And the last 20% or so…sighs, most are still struggling with how to communicate in basic English. Some of them you feel sorry for, because they’re not really stupid, just lack the proper speaking skills – like a foreigner, and they are really trying hard, so you want to help them out as well. Those are few and far between. There are some who really are just plain stupid/slow, and well, that can’t be helped either, a bad roll of the genetic dice. Others you just want to toss out so that they don’t pollute the gene pool further. They’ve given up trying, they have a bad attitude, they don’t care about anyone and anything (with maybe the exception of themselves or how their friends see them), etc.

Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling it’s this shallower end of the gene pool with time on their hands for breeding, since they don’t have to bother with higher education and climbing corporate ladders and so on. And what will their kids be like?

I shudder to imagine.

So I guess, if there are so many walks of people in life, little wonder why a subset of them end up in the virtual world of Paragon City too.

And end up exasperating me to death.

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And so, here’s the next plan. Because I’m not gonna be stupid again and play myself to frustration. No chores in CoH. Game, dear, game. I have enough of them elsewhere in life.

The last time I announced I was soloing Ravenhill for a week, life turned out for the better and I had some great lowbie team experiences. Maybe because they were lowbie altholics.

Well, this time, here’s my plan. I’m going to play Ragnarl and Ravenhill now and then (I still need my lowbie fixes) but as usual, Raven is my /hiding solo king and nothing will make him come out of hiding for now.

As for Raggy, I am not going to /hide, but I am also NOT going to accept any blind team invites for the next two weeks. Not one. Nil. Nada. No relenting. They come prefixed with a tell, or I click no. And unless the broadcast announcement sounds reasonably educated, I will not go for those TFs or respecs either. Enough with random teaming. Sometimes PuGs are fun, but I’ve had a surfeit of stupid ones for now.

In two weeks, the dumb ones should have either gotten to level 30 to plague people there, or have given up and quit and gone to make some other alt elsewhere. Maybe they’ll have bought a kheldian to play since it takes too long to get to 50 otherwise.

Perhaps some people will log on in the SG that I can play with. Then I’ll play with them.

Otherwise, I am going solo. Thanks to Contrition’s generous gift of influence, I can actually afford SOs for the crucial powers, and I am now fairly functional at even-con and +1s, and even +2s.

My natural contact tree is the first to get explored, I’ve already cracked open the level 25 contact tier and I need those SOs for taunt and so on. I’m doing these missions on heroic. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m so sick of rugged, unyielding, invincible that it’ll be refreshing to have something goddamn easy for once. I’m not some testosterone driven young boy who needs to prove that he’s more leet than everyone and has more nuts/balls/testicles/tentacles/whathaveyou. I am a tank, yes, maybe I am a wimpy tank, please go and ask some other rock hard tank to herd for you, don’t bother me anymore, I don’t want to deal with you.

I only like to protect squishies who are actually interested in playing the game for the game itself, and who care enough to support me and not go afk in a corner so that I can get xp for them. Damn fire tanks and their habits. I am not a fire tank, I cannot do that. Or rather I can, if you wanna sit in an even-con mission and let me round up everything and turn mudpots on and then go off and eat something and drink some tea. I am not an invul tank, I do not have invincibility, my tanking ability does NOT go up with insane numbers of mobs around me – whatever were the devs thinking of anyway? They need a limit to that power. You need to kill them real quick before they wear me down. And help me mitigate damage.

I am a stone tank. I am sloooow. You need to point me where you need to go and let me waddle over like a fluffy. My end bar can dry up real sudden if I whack willy nilly with mallets because my stamina is only 3 slotted with DOs until I can crack open my contact and hit level 27 or so. At which point, 5 slot SO stamina = yay. Yes, you can call me gimp. You don’t like it, please go bug an invul or fire.

Do not come crying to me when the psychic clockwork king shows up, and you suddenly need something with psionic resists. Or when rikti or was it rularuu turn up – I think they are psionic too, but what do I know. I am a newbie too, I am not like you, here since beta with level 50s coming out of your ass so that you are bored stiff but still like to plevel up to more level 50 boredom and hami hami hami.

If you didn’t help me out before this, well, sorry, you are screwed and on your own, mate.

Guess you shouldn’t have insulted everyone weaker than you earlier on.

Yes, I am a hard leader. It’s my way or the highway sometimes. Especially if yer acting stupid beforehand. If you’re quiet and attentive, I won’t even say much except to say what we’re doing and I’ll leave stuff at that. If you choose the highway, feel free, it won’t make me annoyed.

If you have to leave with cursewords that trigger my swear filter, that makes me a little pissed, yes. Afraid you managed to push a button there. I know I shouldn’t let it get to me. But I’m human too. You’ve just dumped something negative in my bucket, and I have to deal with it. Hopefully by filling it with some positives elsewhere, so that I will balance out. (You won’t, if yer so negative every day. I take it people cuss at you while driving also because yer the leetest driver around, but no one else will get outta your way. Heh, easy girl, go read some nice spiritual webbys about Tao so you’re not so bitter.)

That’s me. I did the same thing to clean out GoC. I was feeling crappy every time some idiot showed up to steal from the donation box and yelled at me for outcasting them because they were acting like assholes. I was feeling like shit when I had to hunt down Kestal and exorcise him from the guild because he was a dishonest pain in the ass and I had to deal with his fury and bullshit and worry about what kind of trouble he would stir up otherwise. I wasn’t taking delight in anything when I outted people who were cold, selfish, inclined to politicking / trouble-making as well. Dealing with them was unpleasant in the least.

But because I took those steps, GoC became a lot cleaner, and more like a friendly haven for many other people because we didn’t have to deal with those sorts of people every day. So yea, I am a dictator with dreams of benevolency. Maybe I am an unfair Hitler. You can hate me but I have high standards for my groups all the same.

So yeah, even though I do get a little miffed about you swearing at me as I boot you off the team or you drop off by yourself, I am grateful that I didn’t have to deal with you –in- the team itself, because I know you’re not gonna listen anyway, and just spew out obscenities every so often and be a health hazard to the party too.

Oh, and remember to thank Statesman for making sure soloing is still an option.

Bcause I can’t play with your style. You can’t play with my style. But we can all still play the same game with each other in different sandboxes, and give Cryptic our money, as long as you don’t come within 500 yards of me, I will do the same to you and everybody (including Cryptic) can be happy.

Yay, I love happy endings.