Heh. I knew it couldn't last. I had been getting a huge chain of really good teams and having some incredible luck soloing and so on - all through double xp weekend. I'm almost pushing 47, which is good.
Unfortunately, I made the critical error of allowing some random guys on my Efficiency Expert badge missions - and we ran out of time while putzing around with big groups of Relentless Malta - which is not fun.
So yea, I'm disappointed. Now I won't be able to get this badge with Malentis, which I wanted as my badge whore for CoV side. Ah well. Looks like I'll just have to make another dedicated badge whore, prolly an invis brute if possible, and just go solo shit. Of course, I wouldn't have any special accomplishment badges on him either but bleh. :P
*stretches* I know I titled this Life's Little Disappointments (plural) because I had the feeling that I had something else to describe that was disappointing. For the life of me, I can't remember wtf it is anymore. :P
Oh yea, now I remember. My Shop@PBS orders got canceled, twice. Because the idiotic shop wouldn't accept an out-of-state credit card. And even calling up the place didn't work. So my grand plans to return home loaded with kewl science videos got shot in the foot repeatedly.
The good thing about me is that I tend to brush these off quite fast and make new alternative plans. Like for the PBS example, I realized that Amazon had a boatload of the documentaries I wanted, so I'm just gonna go back HOME and order the documentaries, instead of waiting on tenterhooks for parcels to arrive.
And I've had lots of good stuff happen to me. I managed to get my claws into all the filk CDs I wanted. I plan on treating myself to a niiiice Sunday Brunch at a very classy restaurant next to the hotel I'm staying at. Malentis is *gasp* sooo close to 47 that I can feel it. Once I hit him there, I think I will take a break and go play some other AT. Possibly a brute, so I can vent some frustration. Hell, I may as well brute first, then run him again. :)
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
UD: Da Big Bash!
Surprisingly, the game I'm having the MOST fun with is Urban Dead, presently. :)
Why? After reading much of the wiki (just search up "Big Bash"), I realized there was more to life than wandering around aimlessly hoping for a stray harman (sorry, human) to get left stranded outside on the streets.
In fact, the zambahz (cough, zombies) were having a HUGE partah (ahem, party) across the greater part of the city of Malton. It took about 1-2 days to indulge in 100 AP's worth of forced marching to join up with them, but after that, it's been the funnest time evah.
There's about 200+ zombies in this great horde rampaging across Malton, and with the new skills, we are finding out that we can crack open even Malls with pretty rapid speed. I got there to chew on the last remnants of Marven Mall, participated in the siege of Ackland (which was pretty epic for me, about 2-3 days, but damn fast considering) and we just tore through Nichols in about a day or two.
I'm hoping that we can continue this pace tearing up most of the city before we get ourselves hyped up enough to thrash the legendary Caiger Mall. A lot of zombies don't want to go there, and fine, but if we thrash most of the neighborhood, eventually, we'll run out of suburbs to thrash, right? :P
Great stuff.
Why? After reading much of the wiki (just search up "Big Bash"), I realized there was more to life than wandering around aimlessly hoping for a stray harman (sorry, human) to get left stranded outside on the streets.
In fact, the zambahz (cough, zombies) were having a HUGE partah (ahem, party) across the greater part of the city of Malton. It took about 1-2 days to indulge in 100 AP's worth of forced marching to join up with them, but after that, it's been the funnest time evah.
There's about 200+ zombies in this great horde rampaging across Malton, and with the new skills, we are finding out that we can crack open even Malls with pretty rapid speed. I got there to chew on the last remnants of Marven Mall, participated in the siege of Ackland (which was pretty epic for me, about 2-3 days, but damn fast considering) and we just tore through Nichols in about a day or two.
I'm hoping that we can continue this pace tearing up most of the city before we get ourselves hyped up enough to thrash the legendary Caiger Mall. A lot of zombies don't want to go there, and fine, but if we thrash most of the neighborhood, eventually, we'll run out of suburbs to thrash, right? :P
Great stuff.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Guildwars. Hunt. Kill Skuls. (Part III)
They are Crimson Skulls pirates by the way. I was considering killing a whole lot of them and hoping for chance silk salvage, but thought better of it. But not to jump ahead...
So I 'won' factions. Beat the final evil villain, got my Amulet of the Mists and promptly exchanged it for a cute little straw effigy hold item. But I didn't have 15K for the armor, and even if I did, I wasn't going to pay 15K for it. All my gold seem to go towards buying skills. Being able to change my secondary profession so easily makes it worse.
"Let's get this spell interrupt"
"Bah, I need a skill interrupt too"
"Dang, they cast too fast, let me get this thing to slow them down"
"Wow, this area is full of warriors, I'm going to get these anti-warrior skills"
"Holy *bleep*, an assassin zerg-rush, maybe I should get these earth wards"
"Hehe, let me grab some skills play backup healer"
"Sheesh, I need this necro AoE"
"Wow that's a cool skill, let me capture it"
"Hmmm...I wonder if I can do this..."
"Hmm...would that work..."
The fun thing about being a mesmer and being able to change to whatever secondary I like, is that I keep having to change my build for different missions, because what works for one mission might not work for the next.
Take the mission with Zhu Hanukah, the evil giant squid. My main job in the mission is to interrupt him non-stop so he can't cast rez on his minions. But he spams it, so I have to put hexes to disable his spell. After that, I could concentrate on interrupting his AoE damage spells.
(Sidetrack, I was grouped with this annoying know-it-all monk. She kept whining about how we needed better interrupts and needed a ranger. But when the henchman warrior dies, the mob hits me for 2/3 of my health and knocks me down. If I'm dying I'm certainly not interrupting. The other teammate finally told her to just focus on keeping the henchman warrior alive. After that, the squid never got a single spell off. Can't stand these backseat drivers. Maybe she should do her job first then whine about other people.)
Then you have the mission with Kuunavang. Unfortunately, spell interrupts don't work on his big bad skill because it isn't a spell. And he is resistant to interrupts so you have to hit him 2-3 times to stop him. Now I have to pack some signets and generic skill interrupters. I'm still not sure how interrupting him works. I should go try it with henchmen some time.
Then there is the time mission to reach the emperor. The first team I joined, I asked "what should I bring?". The leader's arrogant and assholery answer "skills, lol" was a red warning sign. If he couldn't communicate with me, I doubt if he could communicate with anyone else in his team. As expected, the team wiped horribly at the first spawn. Next team I asked the same question, and the leader told me to bring AoEs. He even knew what kind of spells I had and told me to bring "Energy surge". The first round the NPC died and the second try we managed master's completion.
The funny thing was, I was really just standing around the mission zone idling and fooling with my skillbar (GW is fun in that way) and he invited me. You go figure how it works. Can't even get a team normally, but sometimes if you just stand around, you get picked up by good people.
Then I was fooling with different builds and secondaries. I just want more gold to buy the skills but I'm bankrupt. So I tried some configurations of trying to solo some wilderness zones, or with just a few henchmen. It's really weird, I still don't understand it -- when I'm solo, even if I'm far away from where I send my warrior henchman, all the mobs will charge at me like I'm the motherlode of all magnets. Apparently the AI can auto-detect the character with the lowest health and armor and glue itself to them. Very frustrating.
I decided make a resolution to stop doing this. Next thing you know it's going to be a ratrace of golding and buying stuff again. Better stop it. So since I was curious about monking but too lazy to make a monk, I grabbed some monk skills with the last of my gold, went off to the newbie island, and tried playing healer on pickups. It was rather fun because playing mesmer was mostly on tabbing madly through foes and hexing them or staring obssessively at some boss spamming stuff at it. Now it's staring obssessively and tabbing through my teammates. I should probably make a warrior (smash! smash!) or a trapper (stack a load of traps. BOOM!). Tried to do a minion master build but it felt really annoying to run around with a pack of zombies.
Finally, I decided to stop playing. Shouldn't burn myself out on the game. Plus, I'm trying to avoid falling into the ratrace trap. You should get Factions and ship your Tyria character over to Canthan :P There are a few missions that people want interrupt rangers so you can enjoy your three second of fame and glory before it gets drowned out by "GLF Monk/Tank/Elem #/#" and everyone rejecting your team applications.
So I 'won' factions. Beat the final evil villain, got my Amulet of the Mists and promptly exchanged it for a cute little straw effigy hold item. But I didn't have 15K for the armor, and even if I did, I wasn't going to pay 15K for it. All my gold seem to go towards buying skills. Being able to change my secondary profession so easily makes it worse.
"Let's get this spell interrupt"
"Bah, I need a skill interrupt too"
"Dang, they cast too fast, let me get this thing to slow them down"
"Wow, this area is full of warriors, I'm going to get these anti-warrior skills"
"Holy *bleep*, an assassin zerg-rush, maybe I should get these earth wards"
"Hehe, let me grab some skills play backup healer"
"Sheesh, I need this necro AoE"
"Wow that's a cool skill, let me capture it"
"Hmmm...I wonder if I can do this..."
"Hmm...would that work..."
The fun thing about being a mesmer and being able to change to whatever secondary I like, is that I keep having to change my build for different missions, because what works for one mission might not work for the next.
Take the mission with Zhu Hanukah, the evil giant squid. My main job in the mission is to interrupt him non-stop so he can't cast rez on his minions. But he spams it, so I have to put hexes to disable his spell. After that, I could concentrate on interrupting his AoE damage spells.
(Sidetrack, I was grouped with this annoying know-it-all monk. She kept whining about how we needed better interrupts and needed a ranger. But when the henchman warrior dies, the mob hits me for 2/3 of my health and knocks me down. If I'm dying I'm certainly not interrupting. The other teammate finally told her to just focus on keeping the henchman warrior alive. After that, the squid never got a single spell off. Can't stand these backseat drivers. Maybe she should do her job first then whine about other people.)
Then you have the mission with Kuunavang. Unfortunately, spell interrupts don't work on his big bad skill because it isn't a spell. And he is resistant to interrupts so you have to hit him 2-3 times to stop him. Now I have to pack some signets and generic skill interrupters. I'm still not sure how interrupting him works. I should go try it with henchmen some time.
Then there is the time mission to reach the emperor. The first team I joined, I asked "what should I bring?". The leader's arrogant and assholery answer "skills, lol" was a red warning sign. If he couldn't communicate with me, I doubt if he could communicate with anyone else in his team. As expected, the team wiped horribly at the first spawn. Next team I asked the same question, and the leader told me to bring AoEs. He even knew what kind of spells I had and told me to bring "Energy surge". The first round the NPC died and the second try we managed master's completion.
The funny thing was, I was really just standing around the mission zone idling and fooling with my skillbar (GW is fun in that way) and he invited me. You go figure how it works. Can't even get a team normally, but sometimes if you just stand around, you get picked up by good people.
Then I was fooling with different builds and secondaries. I just want more gold to buy the skills but I'm bankrupt. So I tried some configurations of trying to solo some wilderness zones, or with just a few henchmen. It's really weird, I still don't understand it -- when I'm solo, even if I'm far away from where I send my warrior henchman, all the mobs will charge at me like I'm the motherlode of all magnets. Apparently the AI can auto-detect the character with the lowest health and armor and glue itself to them. Very frustrating.
I decided make a resolution to stop doing this. Next thing you know it's going to be a ratrace of golding and buying stuff again. Better stop it. So since I was curious about monking but too lazy to make a monk, I grabbed some monk skills with the last of my gold, went off to the newbie island, and tried playing healer on pickups. It was rather fun because playing mesmer was mostly on tabbing madly through foes and hexing them or staring obssessively at some boss spamming stuff at it. Now it's staring obssessively and tabbing through my teammates. I should probably make a warrior (smash! smash!) or a trapper (stack a load of traps. BOOM!). Tried to do a minion master build but it felt really annoying to run around with a pack of zombies.
Finally, I decided to stop playing. Shouldn't burn myself out on the game. Plus, I'm trying to avoid falling into the ratrace trap. You should get Factions and ship your Tyria character over to Canthan :P There are a few missions that people want interrupt rangers so you can enjoy your three second of fame and glory before it gets drowned out by "GLF Monk/Tank/Elem #/#" and everyone rejecting your team applications.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Oblivion and Mods
Arrrr. Feast thy eyes and despair!
Night in a Small Town
I admit, I cheated. There's a bunch of installed mods in there that are just upping the amazingness of Oblivion's graphics. The illuminated windows are a mod. The night sky is a mod also, I think, but Oblivion's vanilla stars seemed perfectly nifty to me too. The cloud/weather effects is probably a bit of a mod because Oblivion's standard stuff is pretty, but not very variant.
There's this GREAT mod called Natural Wildlife/Vegetation, and it absolutely rocks my socks off. It creates a teensy better foliage than standard Oblivion, ever-so-slightly less pixelated, but bushier. And it makes these little random wildlife flit across your screen now and then, like butterflies or a moth very reminscent of the one that visited Gandalf up in Saruman's tower in the movie.
I also put in a mod for something I -really- felt should have been in normal Oblivion. Harvest Mod, they call it. You see, when you harvest herbs normally, the plants still look the same post-harvest. This one alters them slightly, so that they are missing leaves or flowers - a clear signal they've been harvested.
Oh, and I dumped in a Mod for improving the interface from Xbox-friendly to PC-friendly so that I can see more stuff in my inventory at once, and I put in a pretty colored world map.
Same Town, Different Angle
This one shows off the sky mod, and the two planets you can see with it.
I don't know. I notice some people (especially the Morrowind fanatics) complaining and bitching about Oblivion. That it's not all they thought it would be.
But personally, I think part of the POWER that was achieved by The Elder Scrolls, first with Morrowind and now with Oblivion, is the possibility of all this flexible modding that users can utilize without breaking the game.
To me, it makes sense that you want an easy-to-play game to start out with. Especially on the X-box, which I don't think you can mod easily. So that your random kid who picks up the game is NOT frustrated, and is very easily guided as to where he wants to go and do stuff. Hand-holding, if you'd like. Otherwise, you'd lose sales, right?
Your hardcore crowd, on the other hand, being so hardcore or into roleplaying with "realism" ought to be hardcore enough to know how to jack mods in to tweak things to how they'd like to play, however difficult they may like it to be.
(Realism. Ooh, I hate this word. It's usally an excuse for adding slow-downs and frustration factors into a game. I endure reality on a daily basis, thank you, why dump more of it into a game? I don't need to spend 20 hours daily on a game with realism. 3 hours is about my max on a regular weekday.)
Now what Bethesda should really have done is made a proper mod attacher (and not left it for users to develop) and a place to host mod files. (But I suppose they were saving money, they knew a hardcore bunch of players would do it anyhow for them.) A gesture like that, imo, would mean that they support the usage of mods to customize your game how you'd like. (But I also suppose some idiots would mod without knowing how to and then go after their Tech Support for content that isn't supported by them.)
Anyhow, I think this modding of a single-player game is the greatest thing since sliced cheese. Because it's YOUR custom-made game after that. Lots of people like harder difficulty. Well, I don't. I actually have my slider set at 25%, rather than at 50% because I like to feel powerful, even as a lowbie. I'm a hero. I shouldn't have to spend 30 mins hacking away at a rat. One swipe of my weapon and yes, they better die.
Lots of people wanted to have eating and sleeping a necessity for "realism." Oooh, that evil word again. You know, I intitially felt the lack too. It was like, hang on, it feels funny not needing to eat or sleep. So I actually went and looked at the mods available. Then the cold chill set in.
This sleep mod makes you REQUIRE 8 hours of sleep a day, or penalties set in. That hunger mod makes you 'hungry' at set hours of the day, 8am, 12 noon, 8pm, and asks you to eat, OR ELSE. Meh. Perhaps these aren't well-done mods, but suddenly I realized something. I actually LIKE the freedom of not being reminded or forced into anything. I actually still do sleep about 5-6 hours every night in Oblivion. Who's to stop me? Why 8 hours exactly? Some people do perfectly fine with 4-5. Why MUST I eat at 8am, 12 noon and 8pm? Or any other random hours? Or a set interval between hours? Why can't I have a meal a day? Why can't I skip a meal now and then? Surely an Argonian (lizardman) has different sleep and meal requirements than a Khajit (catman) or a human?
So yea, in the end, it comes down to how you like to roleplay. If you like the structure and stricture, go install a sleep/eat mod and be reminded that you GOTTA sleep and eat. If you don't, well, I can still choose to sit down and have a meal, or I can pull some grapes off a vine and have a snack, and I can still catch winks when I like to.
I like the freeform freedom.
Others like structure. Their call. Their game. Please mod whatever you like in.
I know I will too.
And the beauty of Oblivion and Morrowind is that you CAN have your cake and eat it too.
(Having freaking beautiful graphics doesn't hurt either...)
Closeup of 2 NPCs talking
Something else I find cool is how the AI has improved. The NPCs all have schedules now. Making sneaking in and thieving much more exciting, you have to choose your time. NPCs will bump into each other and have conversations. (This one shown is a set piece / quest convo, but others are just random ones.) And they gossip to each other, and you can sometimes get new quests from overhearing gossip. (Mage Guild NPCs chatter like hens to each other for some reason.)
Nice foggy twilight/dawn
I think the fog is from a weather mod. I noticed less weather variants for Oblivion than I saw with Morrowind - felt like it anyhow. It tended to rain or not rain. After dumping in the weather mod, it feels much better. This was really atmospheric, having fog and following a ghost to the place where he was trapped.
Night in a Small Town
I admit, I cheated. There's a bunch of installed mods in there that are just upping the amazingness of Oblivion's graphics. The illuminated windows are a mod. The night sky is a mod also, I think, but Oblivion's vanilla stars seemed perfectly nifty to me too. The cloud/weather effects is probably a bit of a mod because Oblivion's standard stuff is pretty, but not very variant.
There's this GREAT mod called Natural Wildlife/Vegetation, and it absolutely rocks my socks off. It creates a teensy better foliage than standard Oblivion, ever-so-slightly less pixelated, but bushier. And it makes these little random wildlife flit across your screen now and then, like butterflies or a moth very reminscent of the one that visited Gandalf up in Saruman's tower in the movie.
I also put in a mod for something I -really- felt should have been in normal Oblivion. Harvest Mod, they call it. You see, when you harvest herbs normally, the plants still look the same post-harvest. This one alters them slightly, so that they are missing leaves or flowers - a clear signal they've been harvested.
Oh, and I dumped in a Mod for improving the interface from Xbox-friendly to PC-friendly so that I can see more stuff in my inventory at once, and I put in a pretty colored world map.
Same Town, Different Angle
This one shows off the sky mod, and the two planets you can see with it.
I don't know. I notice some people (especially the Morrowind fanatics) complaining and bitching about Oblivion. That it's not all they thought it would be.
But personally, I think part of the POWER that was achieved by The Elder Scrolls, first with Morrowind and now with Oblivion, is the possibility of all this flexible modding that users can utilize without breaking the game.
To me, it makes sense that you want an easy-to-play game to start out with. Especially on the X-box, which I don't think you can mod easily. So that your random kid who picks up the game is NOT frustrated, and is very easily guided as to where he wants to go and do stuff. Hand-holding, if you'd like. Otherwise, you'd lose sales, right?
Your hardcore crowd, on the other hand, being so hardcore or into roleplaying with "realism" ought to be hardcore enough to know how to jack mods in to tweak things to how they'd like to play, however difficult they may like it to be.
(Realism. Ooh, I hate this word. It's usally an excuse for adding slow-downs and frustration factors into a game. I endure reality on a daily basis, thank you, why dump more of it into a game? I don't need to spend 20 hours daily on a game with realism. 3 hours is about my max on a regular weekday.)
Now what Bethesda should really have done is made a proper mod attacher (and not left it for users to develop) and a place to host mod files. (But I suppose they were saving money, they knew a hardcore bunch of players would do it anyhow for them.) A gesture like that, imo, would mean that they support the usage of mods to customize your game how you'd like. (But I also suppose some idiots would mod without knowing how to and then go after their Tech Support for content that isn't supported by them.)
Anyhow, I think this modding of a single-player game is the greatest thing since sliced cheese. Because it's YOUR custom-made game after that. Lots of people like harder difficulty. Well, I don't. I actually have my slider set at 25%, rather than at 50% because I like to feel powerful, even as a lowbie. I'm a hero. I shouldn't have to spend 30 mins hacking away at a rat. One swipe of my weapon and yes, they better die.
Lots of people wanted to have eating and sleeping a necessity for "realism." Oooh, that evil word again. You know, I intitially felt the lack too. It was like, hang on, it feels funny not needing to eat or sleep. So I actually went and looked at the mods available. Then the cold chill set in.
This sleep mod makes you REQUIRE 8 hours of sleep a day, or penalties set in. That hunger mod makes you 'hungry' at set hours of the day, 8am, 12 noon, 8pm, and asks you to eat, OR ELSE. Meh. Perhaps these aren't well-done mods, but suddenly I realized something. I actually LIKE the freedom of not being reminded or forced into anything. I actually still do sleep about 5-6 hours every night in Oblivion. Who's to stop me? Why 8 hours exactly? Some people do perfectly fine with 4-5. Why MUST I eat at 8am, 12 noon and 8pm? Or any other random hours? Or a set interval between hours? Why can't I have a meal a day? Why can't I skip a meal now and then? Surely an Argonian (lizardman) has different sleep and meal requirements than a Khajit (catman) or a human?
So yea, in the end, it comes down to how you like to roleplay. If you like the structure and stricture, go install a sleep/eat mod and be reminded that you GOTTA sleep and eat. If you don't, well, I can still choose to sit down and have a meal, or I can pull some grapes off a vine and have a snack, and I can still catch winks when I like to.
I like the freeform freedom.
Others like structure. Their call. Their game. Please mod whatever you like in.
I know I will too.
And the beauty of Oblivion and Morrowind is that you CAN have your cake and eat it too.
(Having freaking beautiful graphics doesn't hurt either...)
Closeup of 2 NPCs talking
Something else I find cool is how the AI has improved. The NPCs all have schedules now. Making sneaking in and thieving much more exciting, you have to choose your time. NPCs will bump into each other and have conversations. (This one shown is a set piece / quest convo, but others are just random ones.) And they gossip to each other, and you can sometimes get new quests from overhearing gossip. (Mage Guild NPCs chatter like hens to each other for some reason.)
Nice foggy twilight/dawn
I think the fog is from a weather mod. I noticed less weather variants for Oblivion than I saw with Morrowind - felt like it anyhow. It tended to rain or not rain. After dumping in the weather mod, it feels much better. This was really atmospheric, having fog and following a ghost to the place where he was trapped.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Guildwars. Hunt. Kill Skuls. (Part the Two)
Hurray, my Me/N just become "Weh no Su", the Canthan term for ascended. Except that...after that, I realised that I have still 2/3 of the main story left to do. Meanwhile I'm racking up pages of sidequests. Out of curiosity, I decided to try out a different secondary, so now I am Me/E. I mostly run with a full Mesmer skill bar anyway, with supplementary skills from curses when fighting the "Zergrush" type of mobs.
I think my newbie mistake was to mistake Elementalists as just pure nukey mages (aka the blasters of CoH). Turned out they have some interesting utility skills. In addition, once I get some gold I can pick up some skills to make an echo nuker (albeit a weaker version since my elementalist skills will be capped at 12) and actually get into teams. Either way I feel like I am a lot more survivable. For some reason, when I am playing solo with henchmen, the game AI always picks me as the priority target, even if I hide around corners and order my warrior henchmen to rush in first.
But then, I always attack the mob mesmers and necromancers first. With enough burst damage, even the mob monks can't save them. After that, the monks die. I assume the computer is trying to do the same to me. :P
Except that it seems most people I see in the game seem to believe there are four types of professions in the game. The tank, the monk, the nuker, and the minion master (this one is new). Also, the monk needs to be a healing monk, and the nuker a fire elementalist. It's true that you really need monks in guildwars though. I personally think the monk henchmen are pretty good. The computer never makes mistakes, and it has instant reaction.
So there I was, standing around moping by at the entrance of the mission area and rearranging my skillbar. I'd tried to solo the mission a few times with just henchmen, but kept failing at the final boss. In my last try, the last henchman killed the boss the very same moment as she died, and that didn't count as a victory. I was pretty sure that if I kept trying I'd eventually manage but I was pretty sick of doing the same thing again and again. Meanwhile, lines of "GLF monks / tanks" and "GLF MM" or "GLF nuker" scroll by. Suddenly, group invites me. 5/8 ... ok let's try.
(Sidetrack: I like how the GW team invite just lists a bunch of people at your teambar instead of creating some horrendous popup like in CoH. It feels ok for people to just ask me if I want to team that way because I don't get some popup in the middle of my screen I have to click away.)
A team with a mix warriors, elementalists, and necromancers. Duh. I was puzzled, why did they even invite me? Then they picked up someone else and grabbed two monk henchmen. No standing around whining "GLF monks" nonstop. They actually had some kind of strategy and really ripped through the mission with minimal deaths.
Anyway, back to the game itself. One thing I'm rather disatisfied with is the high cost of living. Even crafting some armor bankrupts me. I managed to pick up a bunch of purple items but I don't feel like broadcasting to the world hoping to sell them off. Happily, someone gave me two free green mesmer weapons so the weapon side is settled.
I'm thinking of joining a guild. It gets pretty boring just soloing. But there isn't a directory and something about the weird broadcasts of "XX guild recruiting YYY stats 100 members" puts me off. Attempts to get my CoH supergroup to play with me have failed:P
I think my newbie mistake was to mistake Elementalists as just pure nukey mages (aka the blasters of CoH). Turned out they have some interesting utility skills. In addition, once I get some gold I can pick up some skills to make an echo nuker (albeit a weaker version since my elementalist skills will be capped at 12) and actually get into teams. Either way I feel like I am a lot more survivable. For some reason, when I am playing solo with henchmen, the game AI always picks me as the priority target, even if I hide around corners and order my warrior henchmen to rush in first.
But then, I always attack the mob mesmers and necromancers first. With enough burst damage, even the mob monks can't save them. After that, the monks die. I assume the computer is trying to do the same to me. :P
Except that it seems most people I see in the game seem to believe there are four types of professions in the game. The tank, the monk, the nuker, and the minion master (this one is new). Also, the monk needs to be a healing monk, and the nuker a fire elementalist. It's true that you really need monks in guildwars though. I personally think the monk henchmen are pretty good. The computer never makes mistakes, and it has instant reaction.
So there I was, standing around moping by at the entrance of the mission area and rearranging my skillbar. I'd tried to solo the mission a few times with just henchmen, but kept failing at the final boss. In my last try, the last henchman killed the boss the very same moment as she died, and that didn't count as a victory. I was pretty sure that if I kept trying I'd eventually manage but I was pretty sick of doing the same thing again and again. Meanwhile, lines of "GLF monks / tanks" and "GLF MM" or "GLF nuker" scroll by. Suddenly, group invites me. 5/8 ... ok let's try.
(Sidetrack: I like how the GW team invite just lists a bunch of people at your teambar instead of creating some horrendous popup like in CoH. It feels ok for people to just ask me if I want to team that way because I don't get some popup in the middle of my screen I have to click away.)
A team with a mix warriors, elementalists, and necromancers. Duh. I was puzzled, why did they even invite me? Then they picked up someone else and grabbed two monk henchmen. No standing around whining "GLF monks" nonstop. They actually had some kind of strategy and really ripped through the mission with minimal deaths.
Anyway, back to the game itself. One thing I'm rather disatisfied with is the high cost of living. Even crafting some armor bankrupts me. I managed to pick up a bunch of purple items but I don't feel like broadcasting to the world hoping to sell them off. Happily, someone gave me two free green mesmer weapons so the weapon side is settled.
I'm thinking of joining a guild. It gets pretty boring just soloing. But there isn't a directory and something about the weird broadcasts of "XX guild recruiting YYY stats 100 members" puts me off. Attempts to get my CoH supergroup to play with me have failed:P
Friday, July 07, 2006
Guildwars. Hunt. Kill Skuls.
Rather than continue mindless tedium on CoH and wait for my ever-absent PvP teammates on the test server, I decided to spend 50 bucks on Guildwars: Factions. It's certainly fun, and I'm enjoying a weird soloing experience amidst crowds of dancing nude people.
What is with the dance fetish anyway?
I made myself a mesmer and I'm doing my little quests to get my skills. Now if only my henchmen weren't stupid and would initiate the battle by themselves. Watch out for Pandora Mandragora if you happen to log on GW.
What is with the dance fetish anyway?
I made myself a mesmer and I'm doing my little quests to get my skills. Now if only my henchmen weren't stupid and would initiate the battle by themselves. Watch out for Pandora Mandragora if you happen to log on GW.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Sidetrek: Bittersweet Limbo
Today seems to mark the end of something and the beginning of another.
(And I don't even celebrate the American 4th of July. :) )
Why's this? Well, one of the bigger projects that I was supervising at work is finally over. The filming wrapped up yesterday, with no major hitches, to everyone's relief. I admit to not being completely happy, because of a minor nitpick with my own developed scoring system - leading to a bit of a surprise 'win' for one team. Had I the option to do it over again, I would tweak my scoring system just a lil. But anyway, what's over is over, bittersweet as it is.
And the same bittersweet flavour extends to my gaming. For the past two days, I have been hoping to achieve placing in a contest I found on the Kingdom of Loathing forum boards. Which is to score a 2-day ascension with the lowest possible amount of banked skills. My character was in really good position to snatch 1st Place had I managed it, because of my current ascension number (was 11, now 12 this run), I see on the boards others have managed it at 13.
For the past two days, I have been indulging in strategic planning nearly bordering on OCD. :) What I should pull from Hagnk's, what food and drink I should be using, etc, to attempt an AT ascension on double moxie days. I even splurged a ton of meat on buying hi meins that I really could barely afford, and would normally never dream of using to boost my adventures.
*sighs* So close yet so far.
I end the second day and my chances of placement with a self-inflicted blooper.
On the sour grapes side of things, I think that even had I not screwed up, I wouldn't have enough turns to achieve this. I was at 7 adventures remaining, and my only option was to drink for more adventures. I -could- have used the superhuman cocktailcrafting skill to make up a 3 drunkeness drink, which would have added ~6 adventures, one turn used up to make the drink, gives a total of 12 adventures.
12 adventures in which to go through the lair and defeat the Naughty Sorceress. Tomorrow I will have to try and see if I can get through the hedge maze and the 6 adventure tower and defeat her in 12 turns...I have this feeling that I wouldn't be able to because I don't have enough stat gains yet. My muscle is sitting at 66, my mysticality 63, and the Castle was not being super-cooperative in my stat gain attempts, so I wouldn't have gotten 70 in all stats and defeat her in 12 turns anyhow.
On the bright side, I think I am very well set up for 3 day ascension now. It's July, I bought another Mr A and the item of the month, which is VERY nifty to me because it regens mana. And I prefer softcore ascension to hardcore anyhow. Cos the 'intense planning' necessity gets me down, I get all competitive and worried. And I was right, with two Mr A's, you can progress and skip over a lot of the low level stuff and jump ahead in days much more easily. I don't think 3 will have the same effect, because you still need one slot for other stuff, but 2 is good. Very good. Frankly the only thing that impeded this 2-day attempt is imo, not having Antiphon. The stat gain from that would probably have been enough.
Anyway, all this is presently moot, because I thought to 'save a turn' cocktailcrafting and use a drink in my inventory instead. Not being super-familiar with the drinks, and dumbly forgetting to check the wiki for the drunkeness, I drank a 4 drunk drink instead of a 3 drunk one. Which heaved me over the limit and now I have 19 adventures, and am totally sodden.
Whoops. :/
Bye-bye 2 day ascension. Bye-bye all prospects of winning a 2 million meat pot.
I blame /c games. :P I've been hanging out for the past week in that channel while KoLing and lurking to figure out the whole game/contest aspect. It's been kinda fun actually, put me back in the nostalgic frame of mind of RoD and its trivia quests - though they've developed a whole other kind of culture of contests and giveaways.
Oh, and the one difference is that I'm surrounded by a whole bevyful of Spades and Diamonds, as oppposed to Heart-type people. Translating the KoL jargon, this means I have a whole bunch of Bartle Explorer and Achiever types as more experienced 'rivals' as opposed to the majority of RoD guildies who are Socializers.
This makes the whole 'breaking in' aspect pretty durned difficult. I can't expect to sweep the field in victory like how it went in RoD. But it was pretty fun to try participating a lil in some trivia games and also shamelessly take advantage of any Anti-Raffles coming my way - aka store giveaways at low low prices, plus a lottery chance at winning something else.
As luck would have it, some gal was celebrating her birthday during these two days, and I managed to win 3 Retenez Herb Pates. Which isn't too shabby. Cos the top prizes were stuff like Mr A.s, but come now, let's be content with what I got. :)
*sighs* Anyhow, it's still a bit bittersweet. I'm used to aiming for the moon, with this romantic notion that I'll achieve it somehow with all the hope and planning I'm doing. Kinda movie-esque, in a way. Amazingly I get it, more often than not, sometimes Fate just falls that way.
(Like when I participated in the one contest in /c games that was open for hardcore/ronin, just thinking that I'd be the one to win the lottery, and I did...)
But sometimes I don't. I'm not devastated by any means, just naturally a little disappointed. But today has been a bunch of those teensy weeny mild 'let-downs' which have added up to being a moderate 'not really my day, maybe I should just sleep it off and start tomorrow anew' kind of feeling.
On the optimistic side, at least I got to try out Accordion Thief. It's pretty fun, actually, having all these buffs available. And the wizard's hat, which saves me all the monstrous effort of drinking soda water. I HATE soda water. Call me spoiled, but I grew up on magical mystery juice. I despise its cost to mana ratio. At least at lvl 9, the AT can sneak in and buy MMJ. I think I might do a few AT runs again, at an easier pace (3-6 days?), to collect some of these buffs.
It was fun attempting to 'win.' But unless I want another repeat of RoD, I need to recognize it just as that, an 'attempt' to win. Not a necessity. Not an entitlement. Not an obsession. Easy come, easy go. Plenty of other contests, in good time as I get more skilled and experienced. I was biting off more than I could chew as a newbie. *shrugs*
Now I should return back to my single-player insularity for a while and start collecting this whole new world of AT buffs (and combat initiative boosting skills), so that I'm less reliant on getting out of Ronin and needing Testudinata the buffbot to help me out. Not to mention start farming the Icy Peak a little to make up for the ~100-200k meat I blew on this attempt. :)
Couple more mild 'setbacks' or road bumps, rather. Urban Dead. Have been spending two days wandering aimlessly, looking for survivors to prey on. None to be found. Have developed enough in sophistication that I don't wanna just eat zombies, but not enough to be able to launch my own attack and organize any feral z's to come help me yet. Ended up ending my turn at a revive point, and some weirdo revived me. Oh well. So I tried to search up some good stuff to help my future zombie survival, but the place I am in has been too ransacked to find anything good. Well, duh, I was heading toward zombie headquarters in the hope of finding allies. Long story short, it's been a little aimless, with no progress in sight. Just gotta wait for another zed to kill me (give him some xp) and go hunting again. Tomorrow.
My career path. Sheesh. I have heard no news. Whatsoever. I really don't like being in Limbo. And when it's an internal application, rather than some cold-calling envelope dropped on your desk, I would have thought you would at least have the civility to mention -something- in passing, right? Whether yea, or nay, don't hold out hope or juuus maybe? But what do I know anything about HR practices, hmm? *snorts*
My decision about my laptop. It looks more and more like I may as well just take the pragmatic option. I'll have to go back to Sim Lim and look at it again, and if it doesn't induce absolute horror in me, I'll settle for the mid-range system. Regardless of whether I get the promo or no. I can always spend celebration money on something else.
Because after a few day's consideration, I think I want to upgrade my desktop too. I'd like a better graphics card, and I might switch the monitor (Mom bought a new one, super-big sized, and it's attached to a computer that dates back to the Stone Ages, ie. doesn't need it) and up my RAM to 2 gig. See, I bumped CoX up to High and Very High Quality graphics to take screenies and it actually looks very sweet, just that my current system would totally choke on it. I'll do this as a belated birthday present assuming I survive the flight there and back again (I'm always pretty fatalistic about flights.)
I want to catch up on comics before my trip. Means today I should really take note of all the comics I want/need, and go get 'em on Wednesday. I've been putting off ordering Nodwick and PS238, it looks like I may as well go over -there- and order them, saving myself some shipping money.
My previous trip report and sharing session is still in fucking Limbo. I can't say I'm depressed over this because I'd been too busy and exhausted to even -think- about writing one. Time's a tickin' and I think I better try and write it today. *sighs*
Yea. Summary for those not patient to read the whole freaking essay. Life is a series of ups and downs. Currently, I happen to have feet firmly placed in a small hole. It's not giant pit of DOOM sized, but I have to struggle out of this mild downswing and begin to rebuild again.
(And I don't even celebrate the American 4th of July. :) )
Why's this? Well, one of the bigger projects that I was supervising at work is finally over. The filming wrapped up yesterday, with no major hitches, to everyone's relief. I admit to not being completely happy, because of a minor nitpick with my own developed scoring system - leading to a bit of a surprise 'win' for one team. Had I the option to do it over again, I would tweak my scoring system just a lil. But anyway, what's over is over, bittersweet as it is.
And the same bittersweet flavour extends to my gaming. For the past two days, I have been hoping to achieve placing in a contest I found on the Kingdom of Loathing forum boards. Which is to score a 2-day ascension with the lowest possible amount of banked skills. My character was in really good position to snatch 1st Place had I managed it, because of my current ascension number (was 11, now 12 this run), I see on the boards others have managed it at 13.
For the past two days, I have been indulging in strategic planning nearly bordering on OCD. :) What I should pull from Hagnk's, what food and drink I should be using, etc, to attempt an AT ascension on double moxie days. I even splurged a ton of meat on buying hi meins that I really could barely afford, and would normally never dream of using to boost my adventures.
*sighs* So close yet so far.
I end the second day and my chances of placement with a self-inflicted blooper.
On the sour grapes side of things, I think that even had I not screwed up, I wouldn't have enough turns to achieve this. I was at 7 adventures remaining, and my only option was to drink for more adventures. I -could- have used the superhuman cocktailcrafting skill to make up a 3 drunkeness drink, which would have added ~6 adventures, one turn used up to make the drink, gives a total of 12 adventures.
12 adventures in which to go through the lair and defeat the Naughty Sorceress. Tomorrow I will have to try and see if I can get through the hedge maze and the 6 adventure tower and defeat her in 12 turns...I have this feeling that I wouldn't be able to because I don't have enough stat gains yet. My muscle is sitting at 66, my mysticality 63, and the Castle was not being super-cooperative in my stat gain attempts, so I wouldn't have gotten 70 in all stats and defeat her in 12 turns anyhow.
On the bright side, I think I am very well set up for 3 day ascension now. It's July, I bought another Mr A and the item of the month, which is VERY nifty to me because it regens mana. And I prefer softcore ascension to hardcore anyhow. Cos the 'intense planning' necessity gets me down, I get all competitive and worried. And I was right, with two Mr A's, you can progress and skip over a lot of the low level stuff and jump ahead in days much more easily. I don't think 3 will have the same effect, because you still need one slot for other stuff, but 2 is good. Very good. Frankly the only thing that impeded this 2-day attempt is imo, not having Antiphon. The stat gain from that would probably have been enough.
Anyway, all this is presently moot, because I thought to 'save a turn' cocktailcrafting and use a drink in my inventory instead. Not being super-familiar with the drinks, and dumbly forgetting to check the wiki for the drunkeness, I drank a 4 drunk drink instead of a 3 drunk one. Which heaved me over the limit and now I have 19 adventures, and am totally sodden.
Whoops. :/
Bye-bye 2 day ascension. Bye-bye all prospects of winning a 2 million meat pot.
I blame /c games. :P I've been hanging out for the past week in that channel while KoLing and lurking to figure out the whole game/contest aspect. It's been kinda fun actually, put me back in the nostalgic frame of mind of RoD and its trivia quests - though they've developed a whole other kind of culture of contests and giveaways.
Oh, and the one difference is that I'm surrounded by a whole bevyful of Spades and Diamonds, as oppposed to Heart-type people. Translating the KoL jargon, this means I have a whole bunch of Bartle Explorer and Achiever types as more experienced 'rivals' as opposed to the majority of RoD guildies who are Socializers.
This makes the whole 'breaking in' aspect pretty durned difficult. I can't expect to sweep the field in victory like how it went in RoD. But it was pretty fun to try participating a lil in some trivia games and also shamelessly take advantage of any Anti-Raffles coming my way - aka store giveaways at low low prices, plus a lottery chance at winning something else.
As luck would have it, some gal was celebrating her birthday during these two days, and I managed to win 3 Retenez Herb Pates. Which isn't too shabby. Cos the top prizes were stuff like Mr A.s, but come now, let's be content with what I got. :)
*sighs* Anyhow, it's still a bit bittersweet. I'm used to aiming for the moon, with this romantic notion that I'll achieve it somehow with all the hope and planning I'm doing. Kinda movie-esque, in a way. Amazingly I get it, more often than not, sometimes Fate just falls that way.
(Like when I participated in the one contest in /c games that was open for hardcore/ronin, just thinking that I'd be the one to win the lottery, and I did...)
But sometimes I don't. I'm not devastated by any means, just naturally a little disappointed. But today has been a bunch of those teensy weeny mild 'let-downs' which have added up to being a moderate 'not really my day, maybe I should just sleep it off and start tomorrow anew' kind of feeling.
On the optimistic side, at least I got to try out Accordion Thief. It's pretty fun, actually, having all these buffs available. And the wizard's hat, which saves me all the monstrous effort of drinking soda water. I HATE soda water. Call me spoiled, but I grew up on magical mystery juice. I despise its cost to mana ratio. At least at lvl 9, the AT can sneak in and buy MMJ. I think I might do a few AT runs again, at an easier pace (3-6 days?), to collect some of these buffs.
It was fun attempting to 'win.' But unless I want another repeat of RoD, I need to recognize it just as that, an 'attempt' to win. Not a necessity. Not an entitlement. Not an obsession. Easy come, easy go. Plenty of other contests, in good time as I get more skilled and experienced. I was biting off more than I could chew as a newbie. *shrugs*
Now I should return back to my single-player insularity for a while and start collecting this whole new world of AT buffs (and combat initiative boosting skills), so that I'm less reliant on getting out of Ronin and needing Testudinata the buffbot to help me out. Not to mention start farming the Icy Peak a little to make up for the ~100-200k meat I blew on this attempt. :)
Couple more mild 'setbacks' or road bumps, rather. Urban Dead. Have been spending two days wandering aimlessly, looking for survivors to prey on. None to be found. Have developed enough in sophistication that I don't wanna just eat zombies, but not enough to be able to launch my own attack and organize any feral z's to come help me yet. Ended up ending my turn at a revive point, and some weirdo revived me. Oh well. So I tried to search up some good stuff to help my future zombie survival, but the place I am in has been too ransacked to find anything good. Well, duh, I was heading toward zombie headquarters in the hope of finding allies. Long story short, it's been a little aimless, with no progress in sight. Just gotta wait for another zed to kill me (give him some xp) and go hunting again. Tomorrow.
My career path. Sheesh. I have heard no news. Whatsoever. I really don't like being in Limbo. And when it's an internal application, rather than some cold-calling envelope dropped on your desk, I would have thought you would at least have the civility to mention -something- in passing, right? Whether yea, or nay, don't hold out hope or juuus maybe? But what do I know anything about HR practices, hmm? *snorts*
My decision about my laptop. It looks more and more like I may as well just take the pragmatic option. I'll have to go back to Sim Lim and look at it again, and if it doesn't induce absolute horror in me, I'll settle for the mid-range system. Regardless of whether I get the promo or no. I can always spend celebration money on something else.
Because after a few day's consideration, I think I want to upgrade my desktop too. I'd like a better graphics card, and I might switch the monitor (Mom bought a new one, super-big sized, and it's attached to a computer that dates back to the Stone Ages, ie. doesn't need it) and up my RAM to 2 gig. See, I bumped CoX up to High and Very High Quality graphics to take screenies and it actually looks very sweet, just that my current system would totally choke on it. I'll do this as a belated birthday present assuming I survive the flight there and back again (I'm always pretty fatalistic about flights.)
I want to catch up on comics before my trip. Means today I should really take note of all the comics I want/need, and go get 'em on Wednesday. I've been putting off ordering Nodwick and PS238, it looks like I may as well go over -there- and order them, saving myself some shipping money.
My previous trip report and sharing session is still in fucking Limbo. I can't say I'm depressed over this because I'd been too busy and exhausted to even -think- about writing one. Time's a tickin' and I think I better try and write it today. *sighs*
Yea. Summary for those not patient to read the whole freaking essay. Life is a series of ups and downs. Currently, I happen to have feet firmly placed in a small hole. It's not giant pit of DOOM sized, but I have to struggle out of this mild downswing and begin to rebuild again.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Builds, Powersets, Skills, or Teamwork?
I've been really busy lately between trying to get some work done and making time for exercise (my new resolution to get healthier), and a bit of half-assed jobsearching. Finally, it is Independance day Holiday and I get a four day weekend. And then, I seem to have developed shin-splints (*sigh* unfit people trying to exercise = injury), so it is wise to take a break.
Bad news: time is running out. My work visa ends at the end of September, so I really want to get a new position. Good news: My supervisor tells me I can stay as long as I want because he's happy with my work. Ambivalent news: I really don't want to stay in the same place forever even though it's pretty nice/interesting. Call it wanderlust. I want to do something new at a new place, something that might get me another reference for my stubborn-as-a-mule attempt to get into graduate school.
So I haven't really played that much CoH. To be honest, my interest is waning. Even my draconian SG leader admitted that his interest in the game is at an all time low and he won't mind us branching out into other games.
Well. One whole long weekend to do whatever I want, even if it is gorging myself on 10 hour TFs...if I want to. My SG wants to do one of the shadow shard TFs this weekend and I suddenly have a horrible vision of long, debt-laden times (see: hordes of psi-using, ridiculously-acc'd Rularuu trampling my ice tank into a bloody pulp). Flashback to the 45 minute battle with some hyperbuffed +3 Bobcat who continually one-shot me (two empaths, and all they could do was just rez me again and again). Except that this is going to be even longer.
Honestly, my interest is more on the arena pvp end, mostly on the test server. Despite my rather gimp powerset, I'm having fun, other than the fact that sometimes I feel rather sad that any kinetics controller can do everything I can and more, so I end up having just aim from my secondary. Most people started their toons without / before PvP, so you might luck out and end up with an ice/energy blaster. Or you might lame out by having an archery/fire.
But beyond builds and powersets, there is skill involved. That's why one ice/energy blaster can be utterly lame and just die a lot, and the other seems unstoppable. Skill as an innate thing (some people just have talent), and also as an experience thing. Then there is teamwork, which I think is the strongest factor in pvp. All right, so all I do during the ten minutes in the arena is SB, ID, ID, run jump run jump jump ID ID SB phase shift run run jump SB SB ID SB SB. It's not substantially worse than the scrapper who would go jump jump impale jump jump impale jump impale jump jump jump impale.
The only annoying thing is how everything hinges on jumping (no suppression), and break frees for squshies. But that's the only way out for squishies because there is too much burst damage. I think it is possible to style battles around a slow slugout type of formation, but only if burst damage becamse less rewarding. Once you have more prolonged battles, you also solve the villain-side problems like brutes building fury and dominators building domination.
I'm thinking of joining a PvP SG/VG, except that I don't have any high-levelled toons on the main pvp servers. There's a half-hearted effort to level a sonics defender where I dragged pickups through my own missions with ruthless callousness. I actually managed to level up to 29 really quickly given the time I spent playing him. But I don't really think I can bring him up to 50 because I just don't have the interest, especially not with the clowns that you find on pickups.
The SG I'm thinking of also has a rule that you have to quit other SGs. And I'm not really sure I want to quit my current SG, which I would even though it is on another server. But my SG isn't really doing anything I'm interested in. There was an abortive attempt I made to try to get them into the arena, with me playing my blaster. I'm pretty mediocre as a pvp player, but when your opponents just stand around and think you're a mob they can slowly kill, it doesn't take much effort to slaughter them, especially when my blaster has always been built as a blapper (you can't help it when your primary is electric blast, meh). But how can they blame me for killing them if they never move, run away, or give chase?
But the likelihood that they'll ever get into the arena with me again is...very low. So the only way I can get my arena fix is to go to a more PvP-heavy server. Then again, it wouldn't be very nice if I left because someone just quit the SG this week for CoV.
Decisions, decisions.
Bad news: time is running out. My work visa ends at the end of September, so I really want to get a new position. Good news: My supervisor tells me I can stay as long as I want because he's happy with my work. Ambivalent news: I really don't want to stay in the same place forever even though it's pretty nice/interesting. Call it wanderlust. I want to do something new at a new place, something that might get me another reference for my stubborn-as-a-mule attempt to get into graduate school.
So I haven't really played that much CoH. To be honest, my interest is waning. Even my draconian SG leader admitted that his interest in the game is at an all time low and he won't mind us branching out into other games.
Well. One whole long weekend to do whatever I want, even if it is gorging myself on 10 hour TFs...if I want to. My SG wants to do one of the shadow shard TFs this weekend and I suddenly have a horrible vision of long, debt-laden times (see: hordes of psi-using, ridiculously-acc'd Rularuu trampling my ice tank into a bloody pulp). Flashback to the 45 minute battle with some hyperbuffed +3 Bobcat who continually one-shot me (two empaths, and all they could do was just rez me again and again). Except that this is going to be even longer.
Honestly, my interest is more on the arena pvp end, mostly on the test server. Despite my rather gimp powerset, I'm having fun, other than the fact that sometimes I feel rather sad that any kinetics controller can do everything I can and more, so I end up having just aim from my secondary. Most people started their toons without / before PvP, so you might luck out and end up with an ice/energy blaster. Or you might lame out by having an archery/fire.
But beyond builds and powersets, there is skill involved. That's why one ice/energy blaster can be utterly lame and just die a lot, and the other seems unstoppable. Skill as an innate thing (some people just have talent), and also as an experience thing. Then there is teamwork, which I think is the strongest factor in pvp. All right, so all I do during the ten minutes in the arena is SB, ID, ID, run jump run jump jump ID ID SB phase shift run run jump SB SB ID SB SB. It's not substantially worse than the scrapper who would go jump jump impale jump jump impale jump impale jump jump jump impale.
The only annoying thing is how everything hinges on jumping (no suppression), and break frees for squshies. But that's the only way out for squishies because there is too much burst damage. I think it is possible to style battles around a slow slugout type of formation, but only if burst damage becamse less rewarding. Once you have more prolonged battles, you also solve the villain-side problems like brutes building fury and dominators building domination.
I'm thinking of joining a PvP SG/VG, except that I don't have any high-levelled toons on the main pvp servers. There's a half-hearted effort to level a sonics defender where I dragged pickups through my own missions with ruthless callousness. I actually managed to level up to 29 really quickly given the time I spent playing him. But I don't really think I can bring him up to 50 because I just don't have the interest, especially not with the clowns that you find on pickups.
The SG I'm thinking of also has a rule that you have to quit other SGs. And I'm not really sure I want to quit my current SG, which I would even though it is on another server. But my SG isn't really doing anything I'm interested in. There was an abortive attempt I made to try to get them into the arena, with me playing my blaster. I'm pretty mediocre as a pvp player, but when your opponents just stand around and think you're a mob they can slowly kill, it doesn't take much effort to slaughter them, especially when my blaster has always been built as a blapper (you can't help it when your primary is electric blast, meh). But how can they blame me for killing them if they never move, run away, or give chase?
But the likelihood that they'll ever get into the arena with me again is...very low. So the only way I can get my arena fix is to go to a more PvP-heavy server. Then again, it wouldn't be very nice if I left because someone just quit the SG this week for CoV.
Decisions, decisions.