Nostalgia

Note: This was actually written before the previous post. Just never got down to posting it till now.

I may have found a solution to the detachment problem. It's that time of the month again,
and the hormones have finally worked their way out of my system, so I've stopped being PMSy and depressed and gone straight back into a climbing mania cycle. Which, personally, I like a whole lot better than the depressive state of things.

I'm revisiting old stuff to see how things have changed. The list of things I want to try and do is growing longer and longer each day.

This morning was interesting. I woke up pretty early, but not early enough to justify spending a mission or two in CoV before going to work. So what's to do for nearly 30-40 minutes? I decided to log back into RoD to see how things have 'changed.' Haha. Yes, I know. Change and RoD seems very oxymoronish.

Imagine my surprise. Nov 7, Ceir and Kinux made it into CoE. Woot for them! Two of my three favorite imms. The third was CoE long ago, heh. As I was mentioning to the Asc-erites on, the CoE list actually looks…oh, functional, now. Like, the imms on it actually do stuff. So changes might finally be going down the line. Heh. It's still a tide too slow for my liking, and I've outgrowned loot (thank god) but it's a bright outlook ahead anyhow. Ceir said she wanted to put in a new imm-built area every 3 months – which
is a good goal, imo. CoH Issues come in every three months too.

I'm almost tempted to try the barbarian class out now, but two things stop me. One, the
loot issue. Having to collect equipment and potions and spells across a bloody big
landscape requiring speedwalk to traverse in order to fight effectively is too
off-putting. Second, the actual 'journey' of fighting and leveling and visiting the
'zones' is kinda boring. It's the 'hit mob, circle, circle' syndrome.

Now on the other hand, CoH's journey is more interesting because you have options. Play a
different AT and you can really go melee or ranged. Can't differentiate that in RoD. You
can debuff effectively (not just lethargy and some requisite spells you dump on run mobs).

And by god, you can control. I'd like to see RoD'ers “hold” a mob, heh. They got grapple
for pvp, and mobs can lag you, but you can't disable the mob, why? Cos there's only ONE
mob a room, usually. Boooring.

And there's the teaming aspect of CoH, the synergy of a good team is just unbelievable.
It's almost like the multiplaying kick of RoD. Without the cyborging required. And when
it's not, it's funny in its disfunctionality. :) How do I go back to fighting one giant
mob, when I fight 16 mobs regularly with an 8-man team?

One thing I did think about that I could learn from RoD. PvP. You'd think, whoa, how would
I learn anything from RoD and apply that to CoH pvp? But truly, it's all about the
movement and breaking off, isn't it? How did Geand fight to a passable extent? Someone
hits you, you flee and break off. CoH = break free, and tp out or superjump or speed out.

Flying out is pretty bad unless you're fast enough. You move around, out of range, (or
dash around randomly in the arena RoD-wise) until you see the opportunity for yourself to
make a hit in and strike. Queue up attack, run in, whack, jump out. Now the difference in
RoD is that for thieves, once you lock up with first hit, you are content to stay there cos you got circle. It's the other party who needs to break up. CoH, you move out beyond
range so the other party cannot attack ya.

It's a thought anyhow. Someday. I'll make a toon with more movement options and try my
luck in the pvp zones again.

Kinda funny actually, ain't it? All my high toons are poor movers. Invictus is a fat
sluggish flier, Malentis is a tall but also unstreamlined flier, and Ragnarl can superjump
but is a granite/rooted slug with no tp. Hee. Oh well.

I am also building this great desire to go play on the CoH side of things. My warshade is
screaming out to be played. So is my scrapper.

Oh, news on the CoV front, Malentis is well and out of ginormous debt. I got into a bunch
of teams, of which some were good and some truly dysfunctional. Imagine this, a team with
THREE /dark mm's, all of which had twilight grasp and were spamming away with it, but had
NO darkest night. And they were mumbling, we need more healers. And they got some
corruptors who had focused on offense, not buffs. Heh. I didn't have the heart to tell
them that if they had ALL taken darkest night and stacked it, we wouldn't need to even
talk about healers. We'd need to talk about wall redecorators cos the mobs would have shot
up the walls with their screwed up accuracy, and then gotten splattered on the walls.

I made about 300k infamy working off the debt, and started measuring my xp/min running
some solo contact missions. Running about 200-250xp/min. Would be interesting to see if
the rate changes for pvp zone missions. Anyway, I hit level 27, and promptly burned all
the influence buying level 30 SOs and DOs. I'm still short. Sheesh. :P And I've already
turned off SG mode at lvl 25.

I seriously cannot wait until my pet. I've been dropping Shivaan decimators like poo. I'm prolly going to burn out this one and have to revisit BB a third time. The shivvan seems
to cap off at level 25 anyhow, so I should use it for all they're worth now. The shivvan
kicks soo much ass and tanks for me, it makes my controller/weak-damage heart happy.

I seem to be on a pet craze, so I'm thinking of leveling up the illusion 'troller too.
That one has pets out the ass. See, the difference between mm's and doms/trollers is
that we can hold stuff for our pets to kill. MM's just stand there and shoot/buff/debuff,
mebbe entangle stuff now and then. Feels different.

What other things am I doing? I picked up some…game programming books from the library. Am
I nuts? Entirely possible. I'm going to try and pick up the fundamentals of C++...Again. It helps that I chose now to do it, because apparently, on Nov 7 (strange day, that) Microsoft released these 'Express' editions of Visual Studio this and that. Which are, get
this, free. For a year. As in, download them this year and get to use them forever, free.

Legally.

So I did. I ran my 'Hello World' program yesterday. Only to find out that the book I'm
following is out-of-date (2002-2003, which is like a century in progamming languages),
typo-ridden and has bad reviews from programmers who know C++, but nevermind, I'll figure
it out. It's for the basics, and then I'll read a proper C++ book. Visual Studio C++
Express is actually using something called C++ .NET now, which is kinda depressing. I
can't even figure out the difference between C#, C++ and C, and now there's this .NET
thing, but I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

This book is explaining the basics, and I'll start there and figure out other shit from
there. Hey, if I could learn how to put a computer together, I can learn this also.

I visited the Natural Selection site today. Only to find out they've got a new version of
the game. How cool. That's something else to download and try out. They've got some new
kewl tweaks for the two alien classes I usually play so it seems worth trying it out for
fun again. Skulks get to jump from walls in the direction they face (proper marine
surprise this time, eh?) instead of just dropping vertically downwards, and gorges get a
tide more armor and can heal themselves with their healspray, which is damn good for me
and my perpetually shot-up pig.

The only thing that would make my day even better would be if I find out they've finally
got a new version of “Capture the Flag” for Half Life 2, or something. :P Er, Team
Fortress Classic, yes, that's the name.

Oh very nice. As usual, there's no sight or sound of the game from official channels, but
there's a Source mod in the works and it looks good and promising. Updates are current,
and they've even got a kickass name. “Fortress Forever.” How cool is that? I would play
it. I'm a tfc fan forever.

This is a good poem too.


The Unnoticed
by Catalyst
I am the person you always see at your home base.
I am the one that never sees the enemy base unless I respawn there.
I am a Defender.

I am the one that gives you my ammo when I really don't have enough as it is.
I am the one that saves some health for you, instead of taking it all myself.
I am a Defender.

I am the one that defends our flag with an axe if I have to,
and I don't complain when I die doing it,
even if you get a bonus for capturing and I get none for defending.
I am a Defender.

I am the last one to complain about my ping times.
I never get upset when I get killed due to lag or typing in console.
I am a Defender.
I do not hesitate to put my body in between a rocket and my flag carrier,
and it gives me pride to do so.
I am a Defender.

I apologize when I capture the flag,
because it means I did not do my job
and protect the one originally carrying the flag.
I am a Defender.
I never care if my frag count is low,
it's the team score that I live and breathe for.
A small ego have I.
I am a Defender.

I am the one that tells the team constantly what I am doing,
what condition I am in and what the status of our base is.
I am a Defender.
I am the one that you can always depend on,
the one you never enter a map and wonder what position I will be playing,
or who will be watching your back for you.
I am a Defender.

I am the behind the scenes player.
I am your most valuable ally,
yet the most often overlooked.
I am a Defender, and damn proud of it.


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