Go figure. Just when I think I've got it all planned out, change comes along and smacks me in the ass. :)
In a way, seen from a game design and rose-colored glasses perspective, it's very refreshing to have this constant change to a game, so that stuff never goes old or tedious, veterans get more and more goals to beat, discover, trump new challenges, etc.
From a beginner's standpoint, I'm half caught between screaming in rage and frustration and stomping around in a tantrum going "NO, they can't do this to me!" and doing generally all the reflex actions seen post-CoX Issues on the forum boards, and half trying vainly to attain the "calm mind like water/ a good game always changes/ things are ok, still" zen of the paragraph above.
So what's the problem here? They nerfed the food. Seriously. They mutilated chow meins from something I was just mastering the ability to generate consistently, into something more tedious and costly to obtain, and requires a level 15 skill and mysticality guild access too.
Sheesh. There go my hopes of speedier ascensions. I /was/ planning on getting some +familiar weight skills. In maybe 6-8 days each ascension. But that was kinda based on the expectation that I could eat 3 chow meins a day / 4 with Stomach of Steel, giving me anywhere from 60-70 turns / 80-100 turns.
Because I use an immense amount of turns to ascend, I'm not sure why. Probably don't have all the leet phat loot of what, ice picks, and +monster level crap, and so on, but I'll be damned before I find it =necessary= to have those to attempt ascension. My next Mr A. will be in July and that's it. Still, suffice it to say that I find myself gaining craptacular stats in Ronin, and my only hope of speed is to get the heck out of Ronin fast and get myself buffed by Testitudinata in a hurry.
And now chow meins are impossible to attain. Ok, not impossible, just kinda overwhelmingly expensive.
Currently, I've fallen back on reagent pasta. Finally, a use for the 117 scrumptious reagents I was stocking up religiously every day. Goat cheese is thankfully relatively easy to pick up because the Goatlet is like this necessary stopover place. And yay, goat's milk is now useful because I can make a "ode to food"-like potion out of it. Problem is, I can only eat 3 pastas with stomach of steel, and maybe one pr0n stir-fry, which gives me about 75-80 turns. Urgh. Without stomach of steel, I'm down to maybe 60 turns with a burrito.
Survivable, but not exactly pleasant. On the bright side, I no longer have to worry so much about farming for too much spice, and buying herbs.
Here's the down side. I admit to being hopelessly attracted to KoL crafting. I like the power involved in being able to create my own crap, even if it's way more costly and turn-intensive than just buying the dang thing from the Mall. I am WAY tempted to take my current Pastamancer run all the way to 15, so I can perma it.
Problem is, getting up to level 15 sucks. I had about all I could stand on a disco bandit. And that's a Moxie class. Here, I need to raise Mysticality AND Moxie to get the levels. That's gonna be harsh on just reagent pasta.
The sensible thing is really to continue on my old plan, pick up Leash of Linguini, and continue on to Turtle Tamer and Accordian Thief for the other familiar weight skills, closing my eyes to all the cool level 15 crafting skills until I have the boosts to familiar weight, which would stand me in much better Ascension stead.
This would take a month or slightly longer, by which time, they will probably have implemented NS13, and hopefully more content by which to gain stats, yadda yadda. Worse come to the worse, when NS15 hits, I would have plenty of reason to get up to level 15 and then get the supercool crafting skills, right?
Right. The sensible thing is to make the most out of NS11 and get important skills.
But *groan* I'll be subsisting on reagent pasta and burritos (I thought I outgrew the burrito phase, whimpers) for a whole month or more?
What's the alternative? I struggle all the way taking another week or more to hit pastamancer 15, get wok of ages access and cook enough chow meins to last through the next ascension, and then...ah, forget it, it's too much effort to think about. *sighs*
I call this a case of Seriously Wanting It All Now Without Effort.
And in this case, online gaming being a nice microcosm of society has this lesson to teach. Dream on, cos you ain't getting a cheat code to life, everything good requires small steps and hard work.
Yep, so having attained basic LTS strategy, it looks like my new long term goal is to go get my familiar weight skills asap. Now I just need short term goals to amuse myself while reaching these long term goals. I used to be able to do it by amassing chow mein ingredients or the meat for it. Thing is, I'm now going to be subsisting on my own efforts. Now what, hrm.
I guess I could focus on the new scrumptious reagent recipes and brew up some drinks as well. Might be able to afford selling some at some point. Might.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
The Art of Wiping
I'm starting to get really good at this. :)
Causing team wipes, that is. Besides the odd player error, wherein I dump an ice slick and manage to touch a second mob spawn close by, reminiscient of the time I created night of the zombies by dumping a tar patch to touch 3 spawns...
I'm mastering the art of filtering out the high frustration tolerance people from the low.
By providing missions a tide tougher than average. :/
Take the mission I managed to con this group into: Mako's second story arc, last mission, defeat 4 fonts of power + calystix + mako. We wiped at the first font repeatedly, before figuring out to just focus fire on one, and conquered three x 3 fonts that way. Now we're at the last room, facing just over 30 water spouts, 3 fonts and Calystix. Haha.
I'm so glad I got reduced debt protection from a mayhem mission, because guess who is always the first to die once a mistake is made...
Anyhow this is a darned fatal mission. Not sure if the whole party is going to give up or not, but we just killed Calystix, so we're more than halfway there.
It's kinda fun in a way, but this kind of stuff looks more for SGs than a PUG team. Except if it's the rare PUG who won't give up, like this one I'm currently in. Even then, we still got a few people dropping here and there.
Taking ages, but we have a very good head for tactics and impromptu leading stalker. Got him on friends list. Good fellow. Belongs to some SG named Criminal Empire. Wonder if I can steal him for our SG. Snicker.
On the lowbie side of the equation, I made my thugs/dark mm. Dark is so overpowered on an MM that it's not even funny. With the exception of the teensy tiny radius of twilight grasp, the heal power it provides is pretty immense, and can keep a pet going for an uber long time.
Some noob named BLACKNEMESIS (yes, all in caps, I love Freedom) pulled together a whole team of lowbies, sent us on a merry-go-round for a couple minutes by selecting five people's missions at random and then admitted he was new and didn't know how to set a mission, yadda yadda, the works.
Because I wanted to get to level 6 in a hurry (masterminding one pet is so freaking boring, eh?), I volunteered to take the star and sent the group off doing some easy missions first, then I set my diff on vicious and took them on my missions. :)
First mission was taken a level lower, so there were a bunch of evil con snakes. Between a /rad corr's debuffs and my /dark and the newbie fire/thermal's buffs and crazily suicidal fireball'ing, we amazingly managed to win through.
Next mission was +1, of course, got tougher, ended up killing some of the players off. Didn't help that they loved to run away from my teensy tiny heal radius, despite my best efforts to hug close to them. The sensible ones (like the /rad corr) huddled together in this buffalo circle, close to the RI and DN debuffs, inside tar patch, and we spammed healed our lil hearts out. Managed it okay.
Last mission was the Hatchery. Oh yea, boss cobras. More deaths.
We lost about half the players on our team due to attrition. Frustration and all that. Being an MM, I was purty calm about the whole thing, and soon it was down to about 3 of us, with the hatching eggs. And we engineered some pulls and won through. Easy peasy. Frustration factor took out a LOT of people though.
Interesting game.
Causing team wipes, that is. Besides the odd player error, wherein I dump an ice slick and manage to touch a second mob spawn close by, reminiscient of the time I created night of the zombies by dumping a tar patch to touch 3 spawns...
I'm mastering the art of filtering out the high frustration tolerance people from the low.
By providing missions a tide tougher than average. :/
Take the mission I managed to con this group into: Mako's second story arc, last mission, defeat 4 fonts of power + calystix + mako. We wiped at the first font repeatedly, before figuring out to just focus fire on one, and conquered three x 3 fonts that way. Now we're at the last room, facing just over 30 water spouts, 3 fonts and Calystix. Haha.
I'm so glad I got reduced debt protection from a mayhem mission, because guess who is always the first to die once a mistake is made...
Anyhow this is a darned fatal mission. Not sure if the whole party is going to give up or not, but we just killed Calystix, so we're more than halfway there.
It's kinda fun in a way, but this kind of stuff looks more for SGs than a PUG team. Except if it's the rare PUG who won't give up, like this one I'm currently in. Even then, we still got a few people dropping here and there.
Taking ages, but we have a very good head for tactics and impromptu leading stalker. Got him on friends list. Good fellow. Belongs to some SG named Criminal Empire. Wonder if I can steal him for our SG. Snicker.
On the lowbie side of the equation, I made my thugs/dark mm. Dark is so overpowered on an MM that it's not even funny. With the exception of the teensy tiny radius of twilight grasp, the heal power it provides is pretty immense, and can keep a pet going for an uber long time.
Some noob named BLACKNEMESIS (yes, all in caps, I love Freedom) pulled together a whole team of lowbies, sent us on a merry-go-round for a couple minutes by selecting five people's missions at random and then admitted he was new and didn't know how to set a mission, yadda yadda, the works.
Because I wanted to get to level 6 in a hurry (masterminding one pet is so freaking boring, eh?), I volunteered to take the star and sent the group off doing some easy missions first, then I set my diff on vicious and took them on my missions. :)
First mission was taken a level lower, so there were a bunch of evil con snakes. Between a /rad corr's debuffs and my /dark and the newbie fire/thermal's buffs and crazily suicidal fireball'ing, we amazingly managed to win through.
Next mission was +1, of course, got tougher, ended up killing some of the players off. Didn't help that they loved to run away from my teensy tiny heal radius, despite my best efforts to hug close to them. The sensible ones (like the /rad corr) huddled together in this buffalo circle, close to the RI and DN debuffs, inside tar patch, and we spammed healed our lil hearts out. Managed it okay.
Last mission was the Hatchery. Oh yea, boss cobras. More deaths.
We lost about half the players on our team due to attrition. Frustration and all that. Being an MM, I was purty calm about the whole thing, and soon it was down to about 3 of us, with the hatching eggs. And we engineered some pulls and won through. Easy peasy. Frustration factor took out a LOT of people though.
Interesting game.
Monday, June 12, 2006
The Zen of Freedom Teams
I’m torn whether it’s a good thing to be back on Freedom or not. On the bright side, I got so many team tells the other day that I was starting to get a little grouchy because I couldn’t get any mayhem missions or contacts started. On the piss-poor side of things, a lot of these teams were worthless crummy idiots who didn’t know how to start a fight or take aggro or alpha, which led to me, the brave foolhardy and altogether impatient (I just spent 15 minutes zoning into your stupid mission, don’t make me wait another 15 minutes for some fighting to begin!) to start fights and risk getting killed, a lot.
It got so bad in the first two days I was playing I7, that I put a rather grouchy message in my search comment. Something along the lines of “ice/energy. Send tells for mission teams or SFs. Please have a clue as to what you’re doing before you waste my time zoning.”
It’s the long load times getting to me. It gets to everyone, me thinks.
The search comment seems to work. It’s at least cut down on the number of tells I’m getting, to zero, now. Which at least gives me some peace to play in a mayhem mission (dang fun!) and start considering picking up some contacts and/or a patron. Even if it doesn’t quite feed the teaming need.
Still, being on Freedom opens up one possibility. A dream one that I managed to make come true the other day. SG teams, ha! Nightchills, one of our regular powerplayers who plays scrappers and brutes – mebbe the odd controller or corruptor, and just can’t get into doms – formed up a nice SG villain team. Being a buff brute, he was perfectly willing to lead in, take alpha and general do the whole leading shebang.
Man, talk about the smoothest flow ever. We had two stalkers along, taking out bosses and lts. Two corruptors, ice/cold and ice/kin for additional fun. And there was me and a second dom I was lk’ing up. Later, we lost a stalker and picked up a bot/dark mm.
And while he made a little fun at ze doms “you bodybags can stay together out of the way,” he did admit of his own accord that having doms around made things run much smoother and do the whole ‘nice holds’ thing when the AVs came up. (Though imo, “nice holds” as general praise is not really saying much, we do a whole lot more than just hold, the whole crowd control shebang and slows is less obvious.)
Our SG is also not the sort to insist on military precision, so no one tries to drive someone else’s toons. Yet we all just seem to play really well.
He runs in and footstomps, an ice slick forms up seconds after he goes in, and while I’m setting up shiver and a few tasteful holds, the corruptors do their debuffing work and start firing, the stalkers have massacred the bosses before I can even stack holds on those, five seconds have passed and it’s way past time to run in to coat the rest with arctic air and melee a bit. Five seconds after that, game over for the mobs.
And these are +3s and +4s we’re going after. Tis amazing.
And no one screams at the doms if we choose to go in and melee, that’s what we do, after all. Ironically, it was the corruptors and stalkers on this team with the shorter lifespans. We two doms were the twitchy footed sort and could judge excess aggro really well, so we’d always be well out of range in bad situations, and the corruptors tended to stand too near, pick up aggro and drop dead. :P
Fact is, there was only one time in the mission that I dropped, and well, a Longbow spawn + Luminary will do that to you when you’re also stunned and unable to move. And there was one cheap Grandville mob spawn placement where I tp’ed to the mission door and there were like these ten orange spiderlings who riddled me with energy blasts – and when I staggered and tried to run around the corner from them, I stumbled straight into 3 bane spider scouts/commandos. Purple ones. Heh. Ouch.
Welp, part and parcel of playing a squishy. On par for the course, and that sort of thing.
I definitely need to get into more of these sorts of groups. So maybe being back on Freedom is a good thing.
It got so bad in the first two days I was playing I7, that I put a rather grouchy message in my search comment. Something along the lines of “ice/energy. Send tells for mission teams or SFs. Please have a clue as to what you’re doing before you waste my time zoning.”
It’s the long load times getting to me. It gets to everyone, me thinks.
The search comment seems to work. It’s at least cut down on the number of tells I’m getting, to zero, now. Which at least gives me some peace to play in a mayhem mission (dang fun!) and start considering picking up some contacts and/or a patron. Even if it doesn’t quite feed the teaming need.
Still, being on Freedom opens up one possibility. A dream one that I managed to make come true the other day. SG teams, ha! Nightchills, one of our regular powerplayers who plays scrappers and brutes – mebbe the odd controller or corruptor, and just can’t get into doms – formed up a nice SG villain team. Being a buff brute, he was perfectly willing to lead in, take alpha and general do the whole leading shebang.
Man, talk about the smoothest flow ever. We had two stalkers along, taking out bosses and lts. Two corruptors, ice/cold and ice/kin for additional fun. And there was me and a second dom I was lk’ing up. Later, we lost a stalker and picked up a bot/dark mm.
And while he made a little fun at ze doms “you bodybags can stay together out of the way,” he did admit of his own accord that having doms around made things run much smoother and do the whole ‘nice holds’ thing when the AVs came up. (Though imo, “nice holds” as general praise is not really saying much, we do a whole lot more than just hold, the whole crowd control shebang and slows is less obvious.)
Our SG is also not the sort to insist on military precision, so no one tries to drive someone else’s toons. Yet we all just seem to play really well.
He runs in and footstomps, an ice slick forms up seconds after he goes in, and while I’m setting up shiver and a few tasteful holds, the corruptors do their debuffing work and start firing, the stalkers have massacred the bosses before I can even stack holds on those, five seconds have passed and it’s way past time to run in to coat the rest with arctic air and melee a bit. Five seconds after that, game over for the mobs.
And these are +3s and +4s we’re going after. Tis amazing.
And no one screams at the doms if we choose to go in and melee, that’s what we do, after all. Ironically, it was the corruptors and stalkers on this team with the shorter lifespans. We two doms were the twitchy footed sort and could judge excess aggro really well, so we’d always be well out of range in bad situations, and the corruptors tended to stand too near, pick up aggro and drop dead. :P
Fact is, there was only one time in the mission that I dropped, and well, a Longbow spawn + Luminary will do that to you when you’re also stunned and unable to move. And there was one cheap Grandville mob spawn placement where I tp’ed to the mission door and there were like these ten orange spiderlings who riddled me with energy blasts – and when I staggered and tried to run around the corner from them, I stumbled straight into 3 bane spider scouts/commandos. Purple ones. Heh. Ouch.
Welp, part and parcel of playing a squishy. On par for the course, and that sort of thing.
I definitely need to get into more of these sorts of groups. So maybe being back on Freedom is a good thing.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
The Torment Has Started
Oh yea, go figure, they put up I7 on 06/06/06.
Oddly enough, I'm looking more forward to what the Penguin Mafia and the crazy crashed moon are up to in KoL, than CoX's I7.
Or perhaps not so oddly, because I know just how cruddy my CoX updater downloads. It's ridiculous.
I thought I'd shortcut the process by copying my CoH Test piggs folder to the live folder. Stupidly, I didn't make a backup. So I really thought I'd fried something good when the updater did its usual long checksum, connected and then got seriously stuck at "Downloading File Manifest."
After some desperate searching, I decided to just leave it on the entire day, and it actually manage to get past the manifest (it might have just been a uber slow download at like 300 bytes/second or less) and get into downloading 5MB of 53 MB file fixing. At which point it jammed and refused to continue. AS USUAL.
CoH Test isn't much better. It's giving me smaller file sizes, but getting jammed about 3 MB into the process. I just don't understand this crap. There must be a router somewhere between here and the CoX servers that is just FRYING the 6889 port or whatever it's using because it thinks I am like an uber bittorrent abuser or something.
I can't decide whether to update Test first or go for the agonizingly long download...If Test manages to update all, I think I'll do another pigg recopy and try Live again.
I may end up just screwing it all up even further, and then have 2 gigs to download. :P
Stupid CoX updater. How can such a nice game have such an abyssal quality stone-age antique downloader...
Oddly enough, I'm looking more forward to what the Penguin Mafia and the crazy crashed moon are up to in KoL, than CoX's I7.
Or perhaps not so oddly, because I know just how cruddy my CoX updater downloads. It's ridiculous.
I thought I'd shortcut the process by copying my CoH Test piggs folder to the live folder. Stupidly, I didn't make a backup. So I really thought I'd fried something good when the updater did its usual long checksum, connected and then got seriously stuck at "Downloading File Manifest."
After some desperate searching, I decided to just leave it on the entire day, and it actually manage to get past the manifest (it might have just been a uber slow download at like 300 bytes/second or less) and get into downloading 5MB of 53 MB file fixing. At which point it jammed and refused to continue. AS USUAL.
CoH Test isn't much better. It's giving me smaller file sizes, but getting jammed about 3 MB into the process. I just don't understand this crap. There must be a router somewhere between here and the CoX servers that is just FRYING the 6889 port or whatever it's using because it thinks I am like an uber bittorrent abuser or something.
I can't decide whether to update Test first or go for the agonizingly long download...If Test manages to update all, I think I'll do another pigg recopy and try Live again.
I may end up just screwing it all up even further, and then have 2 gigs to download. :P
Stupid CoX updater. How can such a nice game have such an abyssal quality stone-age antique downloader...
Monday, June 05, 2006
KoL: Too Funny
Y'know, a lot of MUD imms could stand to learn a lot from the way KoL handles its events. Their devs have a masterful way of building suspense and gossip. Over days. How?
Small changes. But noticeable small changes. And persistent changes. It creates a sense of history.
And of course, it helps that KoL has the most hilarious sense of humour ever. How can you not like an event where Hagnk's Mostly-Burned-Down Ancestral Mini-Storage (itself burned down in a previous event) becomes Hagnk's Mostly-Burned-Down-then-Hit-By-a-Chunk-of-Comet Ancestral Mini-Storage? Not to mention the nearby Observatory had a massive ball of ice from the comet coming down on top of it. :)
At the Grim Grimacite Site, there were *suspense music plays* *drumrolls* TENTS nearby...
Today I log in again, and stuff has changed yet again! The ball of ice melted. :P So now we have the Wet Remains of an Observatory...and Hagnk's is now Hagnk's Mostly-Burned-Down-then-Hit-By-a-Chunk-of-Comet-then-Flooded-by-the-Melting-Comet Ancestral Mini-Storage.
*rofl*
Oh, and the tents at the site have now become pre-fab huts... *da dum*
I wonder if there's going to be an entire 'Spore'-like simulation of civilization going to occur before we get the "take me to your leader" scenarios?
Fingers crossed for tomorrow and 06/06/06. Significant date and all that.
Small changes. But noticeable small changes. And persistent changes. It creates a sense of history.
And of course, it helps that KoL has the most hilarious sense of humour ever. How can you not like an event where Hagnk's Mostly-Burned-Down Ancestral Mini-Storage (itself burned down in a previous event) becomes Hagnk's Mostly-Burned-Down-then-Hit-By-a-Chunk-of-Comet Ancestral Mini-Storage? Not to mention the nearby Observatory had a massive ball of ice from the comet coming down on top of it. :)
At the Grim Grimacite Site, there were *suspense music plays* *drumrolls* TENTS nearby...
Today I log in again, and stuff has changed yet again! The ball of ice melted. :P So now we have the Wet Remains of an Observatory...and Hagnk's is now Hagnk's Mostly-Burned-Down-then-Hit-By-a-Chunk-of-Comet-then-Flooded-by-the-Melting-Comet Ancestral Mini-Storage.
*rofl*
Oh, and the tents at the site have now become pre-fab huts... *da dum*
I wonder if there's going to be an entire 'Spore'-like simulation of civilization going to occur before we get the "take me to your leader" scenarios?
Fingers crossed for tomorrow and 06/06/06. Significant date and all that.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
I'm Doomed
Why? :)
Doomed to play doms, I think.
See, Poison_Bloom's thread on the dominator forums got me interested enough to test out plant/fire for myself. I refuse to talk anymore to someone who plainly doesn't want the advice - though I'm sorely tempted to demorecord myself and demonstrate how one can solo with one's build. But that's more than a little too egoistic, so I will shut up there and let idiots play how they want.
But since I was dismayed by the story of how (supposedly) no one on Guardian wanted doms on their team after level 10 because they were gimp, I had simply had to make a plant/fire and see how it was, and time how long it took to level 10.
Solo'ed up to level 5 in 1-1.5 hours. Got a blind invite into a level 7 team, so got a higher xp rate gain for a while. Soon, our levels even'ed out because this was a super-great team led by a guy called Papa Mojo.
The mm's took aggro. The brutes took alpha and aggro. (Even if one of them was a hilarious egoistic squirt called Green Building something and looked like a giant green Transformers robot, who couldn't shut up about HEAL plz and so on.) To my surprise, I was casting an exceedingly LOW aggro shadow on the plant/fire. Not sure if it was my level. Could have been. And even when I went a little nuts and started fire breathing and holding two lts at once, my aggro was still pretty low.
Finally, I hit level 8 and took the premiere power of plant/. No WONDER (certain specific) people migrating to other doms feel a distinct lack of control. Only slotted with one accuracy, it was -almost- recharging every spawn. And I had the option to fire it off every spawn - even if in the middle or at the end.
And it hit practically everything (on whites and yellows anyhow.) It can save a brute from excess retaliation after absorbing alpha. Long enough for our /thermal to pump his ass full of green numbers.
Our last mission, the brutes started pushing crazily into spawns, without a break for end, prolly fury-chasing. Some brute hiding in a corruptor's skin (who was just as likely to start the fight and drop to red hp) clicked the last glowy as the real brutes charged into the end spawn and had their hp start plunging. Immediately the ambush spawn arrived behind us.
Imo, this would have been an OH CRAP moment.
I reacted on instinct, dashing towards the ambush spawn - luckily a smart mm had sent one minion ahead of me to soak the aggro - and tossed seeds of confusion without too much aggro interference. SPLAT! And 7/8 of the spawn turned purple and started fighting each other.
Then I could turn away and trust them to bicker among themselves (screw the lost xp, it's an emergency) and start strangling and entangling and burninating the first spawn to support the dying brutes.
We won. Incredibly, imo.
To my surprise, the lost xp wasn't that bad. A bunch of the mm's pets had also engaged the helpless ambush spawn, so they got ripped apart bad.
Anyhow, fire breath is damn nice for seeds of confusion on a normal one-spawn fight.
I think I am very tempted to keep at this plant/fire. Maybe I'll have room for combustion, which I had to give up on poor Black Jeremiah. And he's got this great costume too, reminds me of a DDO Warforged. Hmm, I picked science origin for him. Mebbe he's some kind of 'created' golem/construct.
His name is passable, Flameroot. I wanted Snakeroot at first, but then I googled it against comics, and apparently it's some enemy type Elektra and Daredevil face - way too popular a name to escape being generic'ed some day, imo. So I deleted that, and went for something a lil more descriptive.
3.5 hours later after I first fiddled with the character creator, I am level 9.
Poison_Bloom is either some kind of troll or clueless know-it-all, and if he's the latter, I feel sorry for the bugger. If he's the former, I needta be grateful, I found YET another dom alt that is bloody FUN to play.
Heh. And Lady Sorrow has such a cool name and powerset and concept that I definitely can't stop leveling her either.
So when the hell am I going to play that cruddy ice/kin again? :P I guess when I need to relax or sleep. :P I -will- get to siphon speed some day. But after the two doms are past level 10! :P
Doomed to play doms, I think.
See, Poison_Bloom's thread on the dominator forums got me interested enough to test out plant/fire for myself. I refuse to talk anymore to someone who plainly doesn't want the advice - though I'm sorely tempted to demorecord myself and demonstrate how one can solo with one's build. But that's more than a little too egoistic, so I will shut up there and let idiots play how they want.
But since I was dismayed by the story of how (supposedly) no one on Guardian wanted doms on their team after level 10 because they were gimp, I had simply had to make a plant/fire and see how it was, and time how long it took to level 10.
Solo'ed up to level 5 in 1-1.5 hours. Got a blind invite into a level 7 team, so got a higher xp rate gain for a while. Soon, our levels even'ed out because this was a super-great team led by a guy called Papa Mojo.
The mm's took aggro. The brutes took alpha and aggro. (Even if one of them was a hilarious egoistic squirt called Green Building something and looked like a giant green Transformers robot, who couldn't shut up about HEAL plz and so on.) To my surprise, I was casting an exceedingly LOW aggro shadow on the plant/fire. Not sure if it was my level. Could have been. And even when I went a little nuts and started fire breathing and holding two lts at once, my aggro was still pretty low.
Finally, I hit level 8 and took the premiere power of plant/. No WONDER (certain specific) people migrating to other doms feel a distinct lack of control. Only slotted with one accuracy, it was -almost- recharging every spawn. And I had the option to fire it off every spawn - even if in the middle or at the end.
And it hit practically everything (on whites and yellows anyhow.) It can save a brute from excess retaliation after absorbing alpha. Long enough for our /thermal to pump his ass full of green numbers.
Our last mission, the brutes started pushing crazily into spawns, without a break for end, prolly fury-chasing. Some brute hiding in a corruptor's skin (who was just as likely to start the fight and drop to red hp) clicked the last glowy as the real brutes charged into the end spawn and had their hp start plunging. Immediately the ambush spawn arrived behind us.
Imo, this would have been an OH CRAP moment.
I reacted on instinct, dashing towards the ambush spawn - luckily a smart mm had sent one minion ahead of me to soak the aggro - and tossed seeds of confusion without too much aggro interference. SPLAT! And 7/8 of the spawn turned purple and started fighting each other.
Then I could turn away and trust them to bicker among themselves (screw the lost xp, it's an emergency) and start strangling and entangling and burninating the first spawn to support the dying brutes.
We won. Incredibly, imo.
To my surprise, the lost xp wasn't that bad. A bunch of the mm's pets had also engaged the helpless ambush spawn, so they got ripped apart bad.
Anyhow, fire breath is damn nice for seeds of confusion on a normal one-spawn fight.
I think I am very tempted to keep at this plant/fire. Maybe I'll have room for combustion, which I had to give up on poor Black Jeremiah. And he's got this great costume too, reminds me of a DDO Warforged. Hmm, I picked science origin for him. Mebbe he's some kind of 'created' golem/construct.
His name is passable, Flameroot. I wanted Snakeroot at first, but then I googled it against comics, and apparently it's some enemy type Elektra and Daredevil face - way too popular a name to escape being generic'ed some day, imo. So I deleted that, and went for something a lil more descriptive.
3.5 hours later after I first fiddled with the character creator, I am level 9.
Poison_Bloom is either some kind of troll or clueless know-it-all, and if he's the latter, I feel sorry for the bugger. If he's the former, I needta be grateful, I found YET another dom alt that is bloody FUN to play.
Heh. And Lady Sorrow has such a cool name and powerset and concept that I definitely can't stop leveling her either.
So when the hell am I going to play that cruddy ice/kin again? :P I guess when I need to relax or sleep. :P I -will- get to siphon speed some day. But after the two doms are past level 10! :P
Saturday, June 03, 2006
UD: Cannibalism
Haha, after weeks of wandering around Urban Dead uselessly as a lowbie zombie, getting preyed on by everything in sight, I've finally decided to join in the ruthlessness and get my XP slowly but steadily. How? Chomping on the rotted brains of other zombies, of course. :) We're quite annonymous as zombies, so I go pick on someone at random, chomp chomp chomp until either he dies or I'm almost out of action points, and then sneak away and hide in a clump of 5-6 zombies. 2xp per chomp hitting, vs 0xp wandering aimlessly looking for random survivors, I know which I'd prefer.
I think I will continue to cannibalize until I get enough to get Memories of Life. Hopefully, being able to open doors means I can get to real human flesh.
If not, then we jolly keep munching zombie braaaaains until I get Lurching Gait and can move around fastah. :P
I think I will continue to cannibalize until I get enough to get Memories of Life. Hopefully, being able to open doors means I can get to real human flesh.
If not, then we jolly keep munching zombie braaaaains until I get Lurching Gait and can move around fastah. :P
Friday, June 02, 2006
KoL: So Fucking Worth It
I am in Seventh Heaven (TM) right now.
Remember I said I was Going to Hell(TM) cos I spent 20 USD getting my Astral Badger? I couldn't resist owning ONE Mr. Accessory while I was already there at Paypal, right? A first, and all that.
So I got my badger. I got them mushrooms the Wiki said was popping off the badger.
Managed to sell one mushy for 65,000 in the Store. Good stuff, might be able to make some serious meat off this.
The rest I saved for myself to PLAY, of course!
Got a couple cupcakes, which I haven't tried out yet. Me, I went straight for the KEWL MAZE which wasn't random!
How Kewl is Kewl? There were references to the Endless in that maze! Yes, I saw Death, and Delirium gives you a choice of three bits of shit. That Kewl.
And no non-random maze is a match for Khelfums, the Ultimate Maze Mapper!
No sirree. I looked about for a pencil and paper, couldn't find any, damn house move - and decided to come up with a way to map and record it in Notepad. Which I did. And everybody knows my insane capacity for tedious mapping, yeah? Azure Sea and Desert of Despair and what not. After this, something with 3 exits and 20ish rooms was a piece of cake.
Me so excited after that, I went to the Wiki to see if anyone had gotten the maze or not.
NOT! These lazy buggers just noted down a few patterns, but didn't get all the way to maze mapping yet!
Muhahahaha! So I had to create an account and be OFFICIALLY THE FIRST TO POST MAZE DIRECTIONS TO THE VIOLET FOG!
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!
I know, it's silly of me. No one's ever heard of me. My maze directions look and are oogly. I refuse to have any links back to who I am on KoL for fear of character hacking. But it's a goooooooooood feeling, in more ways than one.
My competitive Achiever and Explorer instincts are waaaay out of control on this, of course. Haven't had this sort of exuberant "YES, ME, -I- DID IT, I CRACKED DAT DEM MAZE and I CRACKED IT -FIRST- (officially, anyway)" ego-sating in quite a while.
But since no one knows who I am, I am happy to remain the annonymous benefactor and wiki contributor. This is my small public contribution back to the Wiki which got me so far and so fast in KoL. :)
Still, that was FUN.
Remember I said I was Going to Hell(TM) cos I spent 20 USD getting my Astral Badger? I couldn't resist owning ONE Mr. Accessory while I was already there at Paypal, right? A first, and all that.
So I got my badger. I got them mushrooms the Wiki said was popping off the badger.
Managed to sell one mushy for 65,000 in the Store. Good stuff, might be able to make some serious meat off this.
The rest I saved for myself to PLAY, of course!
Got a couple cupcakes, which I haven't tried out yet. Me, I went straight for the KEWL MAZE which wasn't random!
How Kewl is Kewl? There were references to the Endless in that maze! Yes, I saw Death, and Delirium gives you a choice of three bits of shit. That Kewl.
And no non-random maze is a match for Khelfums, the Ultimate Maze Mapper!
No sirree. I looked about for a pencil and paper, couldn't find any, damn house move - and decided to come up with a way to map and record it in Notepad. Which I did. And everybody knows my insane capacity for tedious mapping, yeah? Azure Sea and Desert of Despair and what not. After this, something with 3 exits and 20ish rooms was a piece of cake.
Me so excited after that, I went to the Wiki to see if anyone had gotten the maze or not.
NOT! These lazy buggers just noted down a few patterns, but didn't get all the way to maze mapping yet!
Muhahahaha! So I had to create an account and be OFFICIALLY THE FIRST TO POST MAZE DIRECTIONS TO THE VIOLET FOG!
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!
I know, it's silly of me. No one's ever heard of me. My maze directions look and are oogly. I refuse to have any links back to who I am on KoL for fear of character hacking. But it's a goooooooooood feeling, in more ways than one.
My competitive Achiever and Explorer instincts are waaaay out of control on this, of course. Haven't had this sort of exuberant "YES, ME, -I- DID IT, I CRACKED DAT DEM MAZE and I CRACKED IT -FIRST- (officially, anyway)" ego-sating in quite a while.
But since no one knows who I am, I am happy to remain the annonymous benefactor and wiki contributor. This is my small public contribution back to the Wiki which got me so far and so fast in KoL. :)
Still, that was FUN.
Sidetrek: Serenity and Hell :)
I bought the dvd and watched the Serenity movie last night. I have to admit, I don't really see the appeal. Space westerns, heck, the whole Western genre is lost on me. Perhaps it's my cultural heritage? But it's not like I enjoy um...samurai movies or something (well, ok, maybe just a lil bit.)
The pioneering thing? Dere's gold in them thar hills? What's so fancy about a quick draw on a gun? Yer -still- using a ranged weapon to shoot the other guy. Bows and arrows were thought coward's weapons way back in the days of the ancient Greeks. At least go sock him in the face, slug it out like a brawler or use a fancy schmancy sword, that'll be cool, and gutsy. If you wanna use a ranged weapon, oh, go for the technologically heavy Big Fucking Gun, or a rocket launcher, or a tank or hell, the entire spaceship's laser batteries and/or torpedoes. :P
Dunno, I never quite understood a genre where the men were men, the wimmen were wimmen, and everything sounded one step shy of them soap opera drama serials. I guess I have the same hangups about the Victorian age, though I can vaguely stomach steampunk that's well-done, thanks to big, solid, clunky steam machines.
Black and white good vs evil stopped appealing to me way back in the age of He-Man and Transformer cartoons. And westerns are all about this "heart of gold" thing. The heroes are the good guys, and the good guys are heroes. The bad guys are bad guys up until the point where they get shot by the good guys, or have a change of heart and become a good guy. *yawn, boring*
Don't get me wrong. Serenity has a perfectly decent plot and a perfectly decently crafted story world. The script was tight enough, beginning middle and end. The dialogue was...decent enough, I suppose. Characters were an oddly unsettling mix. Reminded me of some bunch of random RPG characters rolled up blind and then the GM goes, "ok, you all meet in a spaceship headed by this captain, see..."
I never quite bought the belief that these different souls could exist in the same world universe. The world tries to be cosmopolitan, but just ends up deeply disturbing. Everyone curses in supposedly Chinese (according to the subtitles, but sounds like some kind of mangled Cantonese/Chinese/Korean/Japanese? dialect). White gals wear Indian saris alongside weirdoes dressing like escapees from Star Trek.
In fact, the backstory sounds kinda neat but generic, with this Alliance and Independents faction conflict going on. The whole thing turned out rather biblical though, supposedly about 'belief', though that theme wasn't explored much, in favor of just forwarding the storyline. It's watchable. It made sense. It tied stuff together neatly, explained the origin of the Reavers, where the crazy telepath came in, yadda yadda, it was just rather generically space cowboy and I'm not sure if it is RE-watchable.
Mebbe I just like my worlds a bit more considerably gloomy. I liked all the deep dark parts about the Alliance meddling with worlds and killing them, the Reaver bits, the part where the telepath gal in distress is locked up and brainwashed by the Alliance. I just disliked all the "yee haw, cowboy" scenes where all the daring rescues and escapades take place. Meh, you're not even an Indiana Jones. Or a swashbuckling pirate. Or a merc. Yer a frickin' dreamy cowboy, literally, with romantic leanings about his spaceship aka horse and yea, it's too soft and glowy goody-goody for me.
Now for the hell comment.
Yes, I'm so going to hell. :)
I have officially canceled my DDO subscription. Ends July, so I can muck around with it a little more, and see some of their new solo content they're promising - but it's too little too late, imo. I'm going off on yet another overseas trip for 3 weeks in July, to the East Coast of the US of A this time, and I just can't see myself playing more DDO, what with I7 impending, GW: Factions if I ever find the time, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion someday (TM) and Hero's Journey on my "to watch" list.
Fun while it lasted. I think they deserve a three month subscription for the much-necessary relief it provided when I was desperately in this melee/buff, "I wanna be a cleric," mood. The eye candy was good, the unique experience was good, it's just...too costly to maintain. Just like Auto-Assault is nice, but um, not worth paying $15 a month to grind up to level 80 or whatever, doing the same old thing.
So why the hell am I going to hell?
Because. :P
Because this impetus to cancel DDO was based on the addict's greedy calculation that if I spent $10 a month on a game that I liked and had proven itself and play daily, versus $15 on a game that I play sporadically but just had better eye candy - then I was really justified in spending that $10.
I mean, going for two movies a month would set you back a lot deeper than $10 USD. Especially if you buy popcorn and drinks and/or have somebody along that you pay for.
Right? Heh. *sheepish grin*
I mean, after six years of MUDing, on an ilicit copy... actually paying for a ZMUD license was the right thing to do, even if it set me back 15-25 bucks on a game that one staunchly maintained one should play for free. So this was kinda the same deal...right?
Heh. :P
I mean, these days, players are used to the payment per month model, right? So dammit, if it's a game you enjoy, just like a commercial MUD, it's fine to support the developers with some money, right? As long as you don't go hog-crazy and start pumping 100 bucks (or a price you -can't- afford) into it, it's not a bad thing on principle, right?
If you haven't figured out by now, exactly WHY I am going to hell, YES, I DID IT. I DONATED TO KOL.
So I could get a funky Mr Accessory, and the June Item of the Month.
Because I have spent way too long drooling over previous items-of-the-month no longer attainable (except by spending way too much RL money than even I can conceive) like tomes of snowcone summoning, and this item is even cooler and more game-worthy than an intrisically worthless tome of hilarious objects.
Because I've been playing this thing faithfully day-after-day for four months, and that's even more than CoX can lay claim to. Because it's fucking addictive. Because it feeds an Explorer and Achiever need. Because it's a damn well-designed game that feeds a ton of different people's Bartle needs. Because it's so cunningly designed that the first slippery step down to temptation is red-carpeted and shock-insulated.
Face it. When I read about commercial MUDs, I wanted to try them out for the free trial period. I was willing to pay a reasonable amount. I never forgot one MUD that laid their subscription prices and skill points/bonus advantages out in a high-class chef menu format. "Oysters ala something" was like $199. "Steak de la whatever" was maybe $100. The "vegetarian salad" option was 50. USD. I keeled over and said, Are these guys NUTS?, and never came back.
Ditto Medievia. I tried it out. I had fun. It was promising. It was kinda cool. If you'd asked me to give 5-10 bucks, I think I would've. But when I realized that the EXPECTED leet thing to do was to pay FIFTY bucks for the best neckware in the game ("donate" equipment, of course) TIMES TWO for two wearlocs... I threw up and of course, never came back again.
I'm not made of money! You ask me to give you one hundred bucks straight, one time deal, and of course I'm going to slap you in the face and say, dream on, sucker!
Now, *hem*, if you asked me to give you ten bucks, in installments, over ten months, and gave me something freaking cool to boot, for EACH ten bucks...
Dat's different. No, really, it is.
I mean, I actually PAID this time. Instead of vomitting and throwing up and quitting your game forever.
Cos your game design is cunning. You never force it. It's never a hidden "MUST" to donate. The game is perfectly playable without it. But then as the players play on, their goals, their outlooks, their dreams start to increase. They start to think..."if only..." They can set their own limits on how much they wanna pay you. They can CHOOSE to pay you, by seeing if the Items of the Month are tempting enough for them. They rank themselves along a scale of how much they wanna buy, dependent on how much they're willing to spend.
The crazy leaderboarders think nothing of dropping 30 bucks to save themselves some pulls so that they can do a one-day ascension.
Nah, I'm not that crazy. As I said, I'm not made of money. But I have justified to myself "a monthly subscription fee" to KoL. If the month's item is good, I'll pick it up. If not, I'll get an accessory. All the way until I get 3 Mr Accessories, and start working on the Accessory Jrs. Long term goal. But KoL is freaking good for that kind of thing.
The pioneering thing? Dere's gold in them thar hills? What's so fancy about a quick draw on a gun? Yer -still- using a ranged weapon to shoot the other guy. Bows and arrows were thought coward's weapons way back in the days of the ancient Greeks. At least go sock him in the face, slug it out like a brawler or use a fancy schmancy sword, that'll be cool, and gutsy. If you wanna use a ranged weapon, oh, go for the technologically heavy Big Fucking Gun, or a rocket launcher, or a tank or hell, the entire spaceship's laser batteries and/or torpedoes. :P
Dunno, I never quite understood a genre where the men were men, the wimmen were wimmen, and everything sounded one step shy of them soap opera drama serials. I guess I have the same hangups about the Victorian age, though I can vaguely stomach steampunk that's well-done, thanks to big, solid, clunky steam machines.
Black and white good vs evil stopped appealing to me way back in the age of He-Man and Transformer cartoons. And westerns are all about this "heart of gold" thing. The heroes are the good guys, and the good guys are heroes. The bad guys are bad guys up until the point where they get shot by the good guys, or have a change of heart and become a good guy. *yawn, boring*
Don't get me wrong. Serenity has a perfectly decent plot and a perfectly decently crafted story world. The script was tight enough, beginning middle and end. The dialogue was...decent enough, I suppose. Characters were an oddly unsettling mix. Reminded me of some bunch of random RPG characters rolled up blind and then the GM goes, "ok, you all meet in a spaceship headed by this captain, see..."
I never quite bought the belief that these different souls could exist in the same world universe. The world tries to be cosmopolitan, but just ends up deeply disturbing. Everyone curses in supposedly Chinese (according to the subtitles, but sounds like some kind of mangled Cantonese/Chinese/Korean/Japanese? dialect). White gals wear Indian saris alongside weirdoes dressing like escapees from Star Trek.
In fact, the backstory sounds kinda neat but generic, with this Alliance and Independents faction conflict going on. The whole thing turned out rather biblical though, supposedly about 'belief', though that theme wasn't explored much, in favor of just forwarding the storyline. It's watchable. It made sense. It tied stuff together neatly, explained the origin of the Reavers, where the crazy telepath came in, yadda yadda, it was just rather generically space cowboy and I'm not sure if it is RE-watchable.
Mebbe I just like my worlds a bit more considerably gloomy. I liked all the deep dark parts about the Alliance meddling with worlds and killing them, the Reaver bits, the part where the telepath gal in distress is locked up and brainwashed by the Alliance. I just disliked all the "yee haw, cowboy" scenes where all the daring rescues and escapades take place. Meh, you're not even an Indiana Jones. Or a swashbuckling pirate. Or a merc. Yer a frickin' dreamy cowboy, literally, with romantic leanings about his spaceship aka horse and yea, it's too soft and glowy goody-goody for me.
Now for the hell comment.
Yes, I'm so going to hell. :)
I have officially canceled my DDO subscription. Ends July, so I can muck around with it a little more, and see some of their new solo content they're promising - but it's too little too late, imo. I'm going off on yet another overseas trip for 3 weeks in July, to the East Coast of the US of A this time, and I just can't see myself playing more DDO, what with I7 impending, GW: Factions if I ever find the time, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion someday (TM) and Hero's Journey on my "to watch" list.
Fun while it lasted. I think they deserve a three month subscription for the much-necessary relief it provided when I was desperately in this melee/buff, "I wanna be a cleric," mood. The eye candy was good, the unique experience was good, it's just...too costly to maintain. Just like Auto-Assault is nice, but um, not worth paying $15 a month to grind up to level 80 or whatever, doing the same old thing.
So why the hell am I going to hell?
Because. :P
Because this impetus to cancel DDO was based on the addict's greedy calculation that if I spent $10 a month on a game that I liked and had proven itself and play daily, versus $15 on a game that I play sporadically but just had better eye candy - then I was really justified in spending that $10.
I mean, going for two movies a month would set you back a lot deeper than $10 USD. Especially if you buy popcorn and drinks and/or have somebody along that you pay for.
Right? Heh. *sheepish grin*
I mean, after six years of MUDing, on an ilicit copy... actually paying for a ZMUD license was the right thing to do, even if it set me back 15-25 bucks on a game that one staunchly maintained one should play for free. So this was kinda the same deal...right?
Heh. :P
I mean, these days, players are used to the payment per month model, right? So dammit, if it's a game you enjoy, just like a commercial MUD, it's fine to support the developers with some money, right? As long as you don't go hog-crazy and start pumping 100 bucks (or a price you -can't- afford) into it, it's not a bad thing on principle, right?
If you haven't figured out by now, exactly WHY I am going to hell, YES, I DID IT. I DONATED TO KOL.
So I could get a funky Mr Accessory, and the June Item of the Month.
Because I have spent way too long drooling over previous items-of-the-month no longer attainable (except by spending way too much RL money than even I can conceive) like tomes of snowcone summoning, and this item is even cooler and more game-worthy than an intrisically worthless tome of hilarious objects.
Because I've been playing this thing faithfully day-after-day for four months, and that's even more than CoX can lay claim to. Because it's fucking addictive. Because it feeds an Explorer and Achiever need. Because it's a damn well-designed game that feeds a ton of different people's Bartle needs. Because it's so cunningly designed that the first slippery step down to temptation is red-carpeted and shock-insulated.
Face it. When I read about commercial MUDs, I wanted to try them out for the free trial period. I was willing to pay a reasonable amount. I never forgot one MUD that laid their subscription prices and skill points/bonus advantages out in a high-class chef menu format. "Oysters ala something" was like $199. "Steak de la whatever" was maybe $100. The "vegetarian salad" option was 50. USD. I keeled over and said, Are these guys NUTS?, and never came back.
Ditto Medievia. I tried it out. I had fun. It was promising. It was kinda cool. If you'd asked me to give 5-10 bucks, I think I would've. But when I realized that the EXPECTED leet thing to do was to pay FIFTY bucks for the best neckware in the game ("donate" equipment, of course) TIMES TWO for two wearlocs... I threw up and of course, never came back again.
I'm not made of money! You ask me to give you one hundred bucks straight, one time deal, and of course I'm going to slap you in the face and say, dream on, sucker!
Now, *hem*, if you asked me to give you ten bucks, in installments, over ten months, and gave me something freaking cool to boot, for EACH ten bucks...
Dat's different. No, really, it is.
I mean, I actually PAID this time. Instead of vomitting and throwing up and quitting your game forever.
Cos your game design is cunning. You never force it. It's never a hidden "MUST" to donate. The game is perfectly playable without it. But then as the players play on, their goals, their outlooks, their dreams start to increase. They start to think..."if only..." They can set their own limits on how much they wanna pay you. They can CHOOSE to pay you, by seeing if the Items of the Month are tempting enough for them. They rank themselves along a scale of how much they wanna buy, dependent on how much they're willing to spend.
The crazy leaderboarders think nothing of dropping 30 bucks to save themselves some pulls so that they can do a one-day ascension.
Nah, I'm not that crazy. As I said, I'm not made of money. But I have justified to myself "a monthly subscription fee" to KoL. If the month's item is good, I'll pick it up. If not, I'll get an accessory. All the way until I get 3 Mr Accessories, and start working on the Accessory Jrs. Long term goal. But KoL is freaking good for that kind of thing.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Sidetrek: XIII
Muhahaha, watched X-Men 3 couple days ago. I like.
I thought it was quite well done, all things considered. Only had two nitpicks about the whole darned movie.
And being able to eat caramel popcorn was a bonus. Haven’t seen a movie in ages, and haven’t bought sweet popcorn in forever. :)
Warning: Spoilerific. Avoid if you haven’t seen the movie!
Nitpick 1: Halle Berry is STILL so miscast as Storm. Storm’s tall, and Halle Berry is a fucking dwarf. Nothing personal, I’m short too, but the role is so not for you if you’re not going to make an effort. Wear stilts or play a few camera tricks at least, huh? No one bothered to give the vain actress long tresses either, and that is so not Storm in short white hair.
On the bright side, that was only two strikes out for Halle Berry instead of the usual three. So suspension of disbelief was ever so slightly easier.
As much as I dislike her drama-queening about “oh, not being given enough leadership roles and screen time,” and dislike the screenwriters yielding to the bitch on principle, I have to agree that giving the Storm ‘character’ more firm, commanding lines, stronger powers and facing down different X-Men and villains makes her more like Storm is supposed to be. But that’s in spite of the actress. :P
And there was one scene that looked like pure vanity and actress indulgence. When the pouting “Storm” inadverdently creates dark thunderclouds as she broods, and Prof X has to run out and ask her what’s wrong. Come on, Storm has more control over the weather than that. She’s more likely to be doing it on purpose, willfully, than oops, I didn’t know what I was thinking, I’m so sorry, Prof! Like some kid trying to impress. She’s a grown woman, she’s led the X-Men before Cyclops, act like you know how to fucking lead.
Halle Berry delivers the lines with mediocrity. Only passably well. God knows how many takes it took the new director forcing her to act more commandingly. I think her heart was more in it when she was acting perky and all-caring-like in X2 and X1. By ‘disbelieving the illusion’ and imaging another Storm in her place saying her lines, I could appreciate Storm’s role in the script and the story, which was written well.
But I still really wanted to laugh very badly when Halle Berry faced down (actually, faced up) Wolverine. Superimposed on this was the image of how it ought to look. A tall, stern Storm facing down the short Wolverine, telling him off about proper teamwork. Instead, we see this barely repressed perky half-pint halfling gazing up at Hugh Jackman, trying to act like she’s not intimidated by him. Trying. Hahaha.
Nitpick 2: Look, you just sold the idea in the first two X-Men movies that Magneto and Mystique were a pair. Or at least had some kind of relationship going. I was envisioning the ol’ Lucifer and Mazikeen duo in the Vertigo comics.
So poor Mystique gets herself shot and ‘cured’ of her mutation…Mind you, she suffered that –saving- Magneto’s sorry ass. He says so himself, “You saved me…” in a shocked tone of voice.
And yes, perhaps you wanted to sell the idea that Magneto is a villain.
But he’s not THAT kind of villain, idiots. He’s not going to leave a naked woman lying on the floor in shock, even if she suddenly became horrifically ugly to his twisted perspective. Even if homo sapiens are worthless to his plans. Magneto’s a gentleman, dammit. Cold-hearted but a gentleman. He’s civil to his nemesis/friend Xavier, don’t you think he’ll be civil to his ex-sweetheart?
I do. I think he’d at least pick her up and/or drape a cape/blanket/soldier’s flak jacket around her. Maybe he won’t treat her like an ex- anymore, but he’ll at least have the same compassion for an injured puppy dog. I also think he’ll be frowning at the same time, going, “I’m sorry, my dear, but you’ll have to hitch a ride from here. You can’t come with us. After all, you’re not one of us any more.”
Same result, just less “eeee, evil” impact. But that’s the point of the X-Men. Everything is shades of grey. No one’s a black and white villain or hero.
Personally, the most ideal version is that Magneto would put her up somewhere temporarily. In like some homo sapiens cottage. Because he’s the obsessive sort. Why can’t he find a cure to The Cure one day? She can still get pissed off about not being included in the inner circle and the sanctum anymore. But it really seems hopelessly unlikely story-wise that Magneto would spend sooooo much energy searching for Mystique, only to dump her the moment she turns human. It’ll be more of a “Sorry, dear, it can’t be just yet, not until I find a way to turn you back.” Not “Sorry, dear, you’re spoiled goods, ruined for life. Cya. Bye.”
Other than those two nitpicks, as I said, I do like this X-Men movie. I think it reflects more of the spirit of the X-Men. Big battles, lots of action – I’ll never forget when we had this class about violence on TV, and this group counted the number of laser blasts and explosions found in an X-Men cartoon (yea, we all knew it was an excuse to watch cartoons as “homework.” And the count was something like 113 and 67, respectively.)
But with that special morals, ethics, story, shades of grey impact that is so characteristic of the X-Men.
The villains are never cut-and-blue villains. They’re just people. With goals, desires, and the willingness to step on and over people to see them come true. The heros are never the ultimate cool good guy – they can resort to as dirty tricks and means to get the job done.
I loved it when they decided to use The Cure on Magneto. It already seemed so dirty when Magneto was planning to use it as weapons to stop any misguided mutants in the way of his plan for mutant world domination. And then, hoo haa, the X-Men use it to stop Magneto. Is that right? Is that good? The question’s left unanswered. What makes the X-Men different from Magneto then? Is it just them fighting on the side of humanity? To protect the weak?
That then leads to the question…is it a ‘good’ action to be protecting the weak? To protect those who can’t protect themselves? Isn’t it…stifling in a way? Who are you to decide that they need protecting? Or guarding?
Like Xavier did to Jean Grey! (See, more moral tie-in! Muhahaha…)
Was he right to do that? Put the block in? Without it, would she have learned to control it, or would she have gone Dark Phoenix right away? Or is it that stifling that aggravated Dark Phoenix to become the destructive juggernaut she was? Oh, the brilliance of it. And of course, as the kicker, Wolverine has to kill her to save mankind. Too sweet.
Let me mention btw, that I thought the Dark Phoenix subplot was a clever idea. I was wondering how the heck they would put the whole aliens and spaceship and funky phoenixes arc into a ‘realistic’ x-men world. Having a repressed personality was very clever. And Famke Jenssen (sp?) pulled it off believably. Kinda scary, in a way, how the personalities switch, and you see glimpses of the Phoenix in Jean, and then Jean in the Phoenix for split seconds.
The other thing I found myself being VERY amused by were all these little references to (of all things) City of Heroes. I don’t know if it was inadverdent or not. But it looked almost like the screenwriters were consulting the CoX manual when they planned out the extras’ powers.
Jubilee’s (at least I think it was Jubilee, I didn’t catch the name of the gangsta girl in the movie, and I saw a Jubilee name listed in the credits) powers referred to as sonic blasts? That crazy chinese guy with porcupine SPINES sticking out of him? The other girl - a super-speeder?
And there was this great scene in the mutant camp when Wolverine (claws/regen scrapper, remember!) comes across some guy guarding it – who has these tentacle thorn-like objects coming out of his wrists and he /throws/ them into Wolverine! Unfortunately for him, he didn’t seem to have a control set. So…claw/regen scrapper vs /thorn dominator…We all know how that’s gonna turn out, right? :P
Thorn dom thorny darts and kites said regen scrapper. Attempting to build domination. Scrapper closes in. Thorn dom goes for a skewer. Scrapper does his melee attack. Dead dom. :P Scrapper regens back wounds. *cackles*
Oh, and there was this great scene in which I have high hopes for the future of CoX. Remember when Positron said he’d like to see more combo stuff done, just like oil slick getting lit up by fire attacks? Magneto and Pyro standing side by side – Magneto’s doing this magnificent Propel with metal cars, of course. :P And Pyro is LIGHTING the cars up with his fire blasts. And they’re raining down like meteors. Ultra-cool. Oh, if only I could do that in CoX…for now, I can only dream. :) But hey, destructible environs in I7, combo attacks in…I9? I10? Hahaha.
I thought it was quite well done, all things considered. Only had two nitpicks about the whole darned movie.
And being able to eat caramel popcorn was a bonus. Haven’t seen a movie in ages, and haven’t bought sweet popcorn in forever. :)
Warning: Spoilerific. Avoid if you haven’t seen the movie!
Nitpick 1: Halle Berry is STILL so miscast as Storm. Storm’s tall, and Halle Berry is a fucking dwarf. Nothing personal, I’m short too, but the role is so not for you if you’re not going to make an effort. Wear stilts or play a few camera tricks at least, huh? No one bothered to give the vain actress long tresses either, and that is so not Storm in short white hair.
On the bright side, that was only two strikes out for Halle Berry instead of the usual three. So suspension of disbelief was ever so slightly easier.
As much as I dislike her drama-queening about “oh, not being given enough leadership roles and screen time,” and dislike the screenwriters yielding to the bitch on principle, I have to agree that giving the Storm ‘character’ more firm, commanding lines, stronger powers and facing down different X-Men and villains makes her more like Storm is supposed to be. But that’s in spite of the actress. :P
And there was one scene that looked like pure vanity and actress indulgence. When the pouting “Storm” inadverdently creates dark thunderclouds as she broods, and Prof X has to run out and ask her what’s wrong. Come on, Storm has more control over the weather than that. She’s more likely to be doing it on purpose, willfully, than oops, I didn’t know what I was thinking, I’m so sorry, Prof! Like some kid trying to impress. She’s a grown woman, she’s led the X-Men before Cyclops, act like you know how to fucking lead.
Halle Berry delivers the lines with mediocrity. Only passably well. God knows how many takes it took the new director forcing her to act more commandingly. I think her heart was more in it when she was acting perky and all-caring-like in X2 and X1. By ‘disbelieving the illusion’ and imaging another Storm in her place saying her lines, I could appreciate Storm’s role in the script and the story, which was written well.
But I still really wanted to laugh very badly when Halle Berry faced down (actually, faced up) Wolverine. Superimposed on this was the image of how it ought to look. A tall, stern Storm facing down the short Wolverine, telling him off about proper teamwork. Instead, we see this barely repressed perky half-pint halfling gazing up at Hugh Jackman, trying to act like she’s not intimidated by him. Trying. Hahaha.
Nitpick 2: Look, you just sold the idea in the first two X-Men movies that Magneto and Mystique were a pair. Or at least had some kind of relationship going. I was envisioning the ol’ Lucifer and Mazikeen duo in the Vertigo comics.
So poor Mystique gets herself shot and ‘cured’ of her mutation…Mind you, she suffered that –saving- Magneto’s sorry ass. He says so himself, “You saved me…” in a shocked tone of voice.
And yes, perhaps you wanted to sell the idea that Magneto is a villain.
But he’s not THAT kind of villain, idiots. He’s not going to leave a naked woman lying on the floor in shock, even if she suddenly became horrifically ugly to his twisted perspective. Even if homo sapiens are worthless to his plans. Magneto’s a gentleman, dammit. Cold-hearted but a gentleman. He’s civil to his nemesis/friend Xavier, don’t you think he’ll be civil to his ex-sweetheart?
I do. I think he’d at least pick her up and/or drape a cape/blanket/soldier’s flak jacket around her. Maybe he won’t treat her like an ex- anymore, but he’ll at least have the same compassion for an injured puppy dog. I also think he’ll be frowning at the same time, going, “I’m sorry, my dear, but you’ll have to hitch a ride from here. You can’t come with us. After all, you’re not one of us any more.”
Same result, just less “eeee, evil” impact. But that’s the point of the X-Men. Everything is shades of grey. No one’s a black and white villain or hero.
Personally, the most ideal version is that Magneto would put her up somewhere temporarily. In like some homo sapiens cottage. Because he’s the obsessive sort. Why can’t he find a cure to The Cure one day? She can still get pissed off about not being included in the inner circle and the sanctum anymore. But it really seems hopelessly unlikely story-wise that Magneto would spend sooooo much energy searching for Mystique, only to dump her the moment she turns human. It’ll be more of a “Sorry, dear, it can’t be just yet, not until I find a way to turn you back.” Not “Sorry, dear, you’re spoiled goods, ruined for life. Cya. Bye.”
Other than those two nitpicks, as I said, I do like this X-Men movie. I think it reflects more of the spirit of the X-Men. Big battles, lots of action – I’ll never forget when we had this class about violence on TV, and this group counted the number of laser blasts and explosions found in an X-Men cartoon (yea, we all knew it was an excuse to watch cartoons as “homework.” And the count was something like 113 and 67, respectively.)
But with that special morals, ethics, story, shades of grey impact that is so characteristic of the X-Men.
The villains are never cut-and-blue villains. They’re just people. With goals, desires, and the willingness to step on and over people to see them come true. The heros are never the ultimate cool good guy – they can resort to as dirty tricks and means to get the job done.
I loved it when they decided to use The Cure on Magneto. It already seemed so dirty when Magneto was planning to use it as weapons to stop any misguided mutants in the way of his plan for mutant world domination. And then, hoo haa, the X-Men use it to stop Magneto. Is that right? Is that good? The question’s left unanswered. What makes the X-Men different from Magneto then? Is it just them fighting on the side of humanity? To protect the weak?
That then leads to the question…is it a ‘good’ action to be protecting the weak? To protect those who can’t protect themselves? Isn’t it…stifling in a way? Who are you to decide that they need protecting? Or guarding?
Like Xavier did to Jean Grey! (See, more moral tie-in! Muhahaha…)
Was he right to do that? Put the block in? Without it, would she have learned to control it, or would she have gone Dark Phoenix right away? Or is it that stifling that aggravated Dark Phoenix to become the destructive juggernaut she was? Oh, the brilliance of it. And of course, as the kicker, Wolverine has to kill her to save mankind. Too sweet.
Let me mention btw, that I thought the Dark Phoenix subplot was a clever idea. I was wondering how the heck they would put the whole aliens and spaceship and funky phoenixes arc into a ‘realistic’ x-men world. Having a repressed personality was very clever. And Famke Jenssen (sp?) pulled it off believably. Kinda scary, in a way, how the personalities switch, and you see glimpses of the Phoenix in Jean, and then Jean in the Phoenix for split seconds.
The other thing I found myself being VERY amused by were all these little references to (of all things) City of Heroes. I don’t know if it was inadverdent or not. But it looked almost like the screenwriters were consulting the CoX manual when they planned out the extras’ powers.
Jubilee’s (at least I think it was Jubilee, I didn’t catch the name of the gangsta girl in the movie, and I saw a Jubilee name listed in the credits) powers referred to as sonic blasts? That crazy chinese guy with porcupine SPINES sticking out of him? The other girl - a super-speeder?
And there was this great scene in the mutant camp when Wolverine (claws/regen scrapper, remember!) comes across some guy guarding it – who has these tentacle thorn-like objects coming out of his wrists and he /throws/ them into Wolverine! Unfortunately for him, he didn’t seem to have a control set. So…claw/regen scrapper vs /thorn dominator…We all know how that’s gonna turn out, right? :P
Thorn dom thorny darts and kites said regen scrapper. Attempting to build domination. Scrapper closes in. Thorn dom goes for a skewer. Scrapper does his melee attack. Dead dom. :P Scrapper regens back wounds. *cackles*
Oh, and there was this great scene in which I have high hopes for the future of CoX. Remember when Positron said he’d like to see more combo stuff done, just like oil slick getting lit up by fire attacks? Magneto and Pyro standing side by side – Magneto’s doing this magnificent Propel with metal cars, of course. :P And Pyro is LIGHTING the cars up with his fire blasts. And they’re raining down like meteors. Ultra-cool. Oh, if only I could do that in CoX…for now, I can only dream. :) But hey, destructible environs in I7, combo attacks in…I9? I10? Hahaha.