On a totally less-related note, I found a blog which gives all us female gamers (of whatever age) a real role model to strive towards. I'd like you to meet Old Grandma Hardcore .
I'm exceedingly tickled by this lil old lady with the foulest mouth ever. I wanna be like her when I grow up, er, grow old, anyway. Except I won't be much of a console gamer, I'm a PC freak till the day I die. And I'm less inclined to cursewords.
But hell yea, they'll take my dice and my mouse over my dead body, and I'll trash yo ass, young 'un, if you don't show some respect. :P
Now back to my current hopeless craze, CoV. Some really hate the darkness and the bleakness, all I can say is that the graphic artists for Cryptic really understood what moods color and lighting can create. CoH is super-shiney, four-colour brightness and goodness. CoV is ultra-gothic punk and what can I say, but I'm normally the more depressed and selfish type of person?
I must say that I find it really hard to team up in CoV. I just don't seem to have a mindset for tolerating the team, especially while playing a Brute who is better off chasing hundreds of low levels and soaking up the xp himself, rather than going after small numbers of high levels. I'm in a low-down selfish villain mood with an all-out-for-himself attitude. And this makes the concept of teaming - with everyone acting like a transplanted hero and trying to save me from dying and all - feel really weird.
Not to mention, the thing that freaks me out MOST. The "villains" who stand there near you while you're street hunting. And no, they're not even thinking whether they should kill steal. They're watching you in that "defendery"/"empath"/"healz0r" fashion, and trying to save you from yourself. I've been the target of a few piddling heals before. Like WTFZ0R? I understand this on heroes, but but...it's so...unvillainous. It reminds me and plonks me straight back into "GAME" mindset, where it's a bunch of do-gooder players who want to heal me so that they'll feel good. I may end up making a bind of some sort. "Hi, $target. I'm fine. Don't kill steal me. Don't heal or help me, what kind of villain are you anyway?"
:/ And these weird freaks who send me random polite tells to team up. Creep me out. It just...doesn't seem right in a roleplay-ish sense. I've always thought of villains as more selfish bastages. They might team up temporarily to get past something they can't do themselves, but why team up for fun? Hrm.
Anyway, on to my real love in CoV. Salvage and base construction. As I said, I happen to have joined a real old and established SG with still a passable no. of active people - 20 or so, offhand, imo, play on and off (yay, good foresight). So these old freaks have been on CoV beta since forever and got all the good perks for our SG, huge prestige giveout and the works.
So I have been enjoying the fruits of our leaders' building sprees. They set us up a hospital in the base, that I have been using like mad. Hee. And some worktables.
And these worktables make me addicted. I dunno, I figured how to work 'em real fast. Other members don't seem the type. Or the least bit interested. I guess they're not Bartle Explorers. Still, you benefit off them because they just tried, gave up, and plunked their salvage on the leader to handle.
I have been pushing things along by relentlessly hunting down lowbie bosses and lts. for salvage, crafting resources myself, and then building some base items with these.
My first try was a Basic Telepad. Of course, without base building permissions, I can't buy or link up beacons, so I just posted a note on the forums to chase a leader to go figure that part of it out. Eventually, one of them did come around and figure it out and connect it up.
I am especially proud of the fact that it was I who pointed out the correct clickable area / activation zone of the telepads - because it's really bugged and non-obvious. But I was so fascinated with the new thingy that I was clicking all over enthusiastically and found it for the guys. The rest gave up a bit too easily. :P
My second thing I set up was a Mission Computer. That was too cool. It went up and it was workable. And now we have the ability to start up a SG trial to the Cathedral of Pain. Ain't that WILD? (If only we'd make a trip there before beta. It sounds mind-bogglingly cool.)
The only thing rather sad about base construction is that only the big SGs will probably get anywhere, and that only limited no.s of people will actually get to play with this base building thing.
But imo, the concept of shared organization resources is ABOUT TIME in coming. I dreamed about this years ago. Figures I would find it coming into CoH or CoV, rather than RoD. As a casual gamer, it makes me feel important to contribute to my team by just going about my business in SG mode and earning valuable prestige. And when you consider big ticket items going for 75k and 30k and 100+k prestige, that is serious karma.
And salvage is too fun. So I am a loot maniac. I -will- stay up later than I planned to chase after random bosses and lieutenants to try and pop some salvage, so that I can craft some resource, so that I can make that base item I was eyeing.
Is this bad? Imo, not really, it's harmless fun, AS LONG AS the pop rates do NOT decrease, or the mobs become limited in number. Once you create a limited resource and huge demand, you get shit like spawn-camping, and massive raids, and things become NOT FUN in a hurry.
If I can just run around Port Oakes, pummeling Family and Mook boss/lts. into the ground, and get the same stuff, why not? I could be any level and just look for the mob group of my choice to make this stuff.
The one annoying thing I forsee happening. SUCH-SUCH-AND-SUCH SALVAGE FOR SALE! all over broadcast channel. *sigh* People will set up shop in their little SGs of one, and sell it off to middle-sized SGs hungry for more so that they can get enough infamy for their SOs. Is this really a bad thing? I guess not taken to extremes it will be ok. But I wouldn't put it past merchants to spring up. Buy it off small ones at bulk prices, and sell it to middle SGs willing to pay a premium. Large SGs may not bother because they'll have enough members churning it out already.
As long as the supply is endless, there may not really be too huge a problem. Then the limiting factor for SGs will be that they require sufficient prestige to use their salvage items. (Because getting the salvage is easy, one single Brute spending a night can churn out 4-5 materials/power if he wanted to.) Earning 75000 prestige to actually place the item though. Heh. Easy in beta now because of the prestige giveaway, but I don't think it'll be so easy in the real game.
I'm using the telepad as an example because it's the prestige number I remember. If you had 75 active members, that would mean each one needed to earn 1000 prestige. I earn roughly say 150-250 prestige on a good mission. That means each would have to run 4-5 missions in a night to get that amount.
Face it, which SG has 75 active members? How about if you had 25 active members?
That means 3 nights in a row, 15 missions in total. Or so.
Bringing it down to say...12 active members. Which is, imo, the size of our SG...
That means about a week's worth of casual playing and missioning...to earn ONE telepad.
The less active members might be able to play enough to offset the decoration costs, which are like about 100 prestige odd.
Yea, it's going to take months to earn enough for rooms, for decoration, for control and power points and so on.
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