/rant
I was playing my elec/elec blaster and doing the Brickstown safeguard. The boss was this elec/elec brute.
So...range is a blaster's defence, right? Brutes are melee mobs. So if I jump around and pelt it with charged bolts and lightning bolt I'd kill it without a brute mob hitting me, right?
First of all, I don't know why I have two useful ranged single target attacks as my ranged chain. There's the snipe, but the animation is so long the boss would just run up to me and smack me. Then there's the hold, which despite being 6-slotted still can't stack to hold the boss reliably...controllers are the control AT after all... and then short circuit, which takes forever to animate and forces me to stand next to the boss. Let's not go into voltaic sentinel, the half-witted pseudo-pet that won't even take its own aggro.
Anyway...since it is an elec/elec brute, it has energy resists out of the wazoo, and my attacks are just tickling it while it charges at me. And it has a ranged attacks and even ranged mezzes! Gee! I didn't know a brute has those...and they hurt too. They do more damage than a blaster's ranged attacks!
Ok, how about I drain it of endurance? Pop some purples, run up, drain it. Smack smack smack...good....boss dying... hang on, it has activated its final tier "I win" power! How could it have activated that power with ZERO endurance? I don't know...act of god.
Let's skip the end drain part then. Pop a bunch of purples and reds and just smack it down with melee attacks. It's actually pretty normal for a blaster to have a bunch of melee attacks that do more damage than its ranged attacks. I rather just smack stuff to death quickly than plink away with charged bolts or something.
Whoa...this guy has so many hitpoints and such a high resist to my attacks that my inspirations run out before he dies. Bang, mez, biff bamf boom.
Two failed safeguards and a lot of deaths and debt.
If it's a brute, why does it have ranged attacks?
If it has ranged attacks, then it's a blaster, and it shouldn't have ridiculous hitpoints and resists.
Come on, I had to smack it a ridiculous number of times to even get its hitpoints down. It smacks me two, three times and I die?
I would kill these +2 bosses on my tank with one hand while snacking on finger food. My blaster can't even kill a even-con brute/blaster/magicky-power-activating boss through contortions of bunny hopping, endurance games, inspiration gobbling, what have you...
But squishies got to remain squishy. If blasters aren't squishy they'll be tank-mages! They'll be like scrappers with range and AoEs, and that'd be just awful -- wait a minute...there *are* scrappers with range attacks and AoEs. Ok I mean they'll be like tanks with damage...which would be just awful -- wait a minute, there *are* tanks with damage. Ok, they'll just be DOOOOOOM, and it'll be awful.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Roleplaying Nostalgia
What is the difference between the old RoD roleplay and the old sec school/JC tabletop gaming, and the roleplay I get nowadays from my RP-supergroup in City of Heroes? The later seems a poor shadow of the former.
Out of the blue, I am filled with an urge to read the old RoD rp logs. Unfortunately, I've lost all of them due to various hard-disk related seizures over the years. There are no logs of desktop play, but I still remember silly moments such as when Mona decided to tie some guy up and stuff him in the toilet, which then resulted in a controversy of how everyone was going to use the toilet...a situation I am sure adventurers in fantasy stories did not have to face.
Despite my supergroup's decision to partially migrate to Virtue, I don't seem to be getting any more (or any improved) rp. Some people are too lethargic to move (their painstakingly levelled alts are all on Guardian). Some people have already branched out to other servers, Victory being a huge favorite amongst the Guardianites. Some people, like me, just have vastly reduced playhours.
CoX is fun. I plonked down a year's subscription for the discounted rate after my little tour of current MMOs. It isn't as hugely fun as it was two years ago, but it's the most fun of what is available. For me anyway. I guess someone who loves ratracing, raiding one dungeon map for a year to get a piece of equipment, camping spawns, snail-like movement speeds, etc will find other MMOs more fun.
But CoX isn't a good medium for rp. Perhaps some hardcore Virtuenites have great success using the costume creator for
roleplaying, but me, I'm cursed with a powergaming streak. I find it hard to stroll around a
mission emoting, so in the end I just end up not saying much, charging on and on to the next
spawn and dragging everyone after me.
Basically, when I play CoX, I have the urge to do a communal 3rd person shooter, not roleplay. That's why I'm using Rental Shivan during the Friday sessions -- Shivans don't talk or do anything, they just lumber forward and throw balls of radiation at mobs, right? :)
I think the problem with doing dedicated rp is that you have to allocated a large time chunk to it. During my brief stints of returning to rp in RoD (when I got bored of mkilling and pkilling), rpers in OSI complained to me that I was rping too slowly...since I wasn't on for hours every evening waiting for rp with person after person. Sorry -- just like I don't feel like doing hours and hours of "obligatory" mob-running, Hamidon-raiding, etc, I don't feel like sitting around doing hours and hours of obligatory rp, which more often than not involved idling on some rp character waiting for the right people to turn up.
Perhaps a scheduled, rp-focused event needs to be scheduled at regular times for the best rp action to happen. This leads me to wondering if there are adult tabletop gamers in Singapore. Or is this one of those "kiddie games" that only teenagers play? Besides Faya and our old group, I only know two other people who used to play tabletop games -- but only when they were young.
Is it possible for a bunch of adults to sit around a table and act out their dorky imagination? Or has adult society brainwashed us into trying to act mature, stifling our ability to roleplay?
I think my rp interest has shifted slowly from the more hack-and-slash of AD&D to the drama-focused White Wolf LARP-type games. I wonder if it is possible to start up tabletop sessions again with the White Wolf games...
Out of the blue, I am filled with an urge to read the old RoD rp logs. Unfortunately, I've lost all of them due to various hard-disk related seizures over the years. There are no logs of desktop play, but I still remember silly moments such as when Mona decided to tie some guy up and stuff him in the toilet, which then resulted in a controversy of how everyone was going to use the toilet...a situation I am sure adventurers in fantasy stories did not have to face.
Despite my supergroup's decision to partially migrate to Virtue, I don't seem to be getting any more (or any improved) rp. Some people are too lethargic to move (their painstakingly levelled alts are all on Guardian). Some people have already branched out to other servers, Victory being a huge favorite amongst the Guardianites. Some people, like me, just have vastly reduced playhours.
CoX is fun. I plonked down a year's subscription for the discounted rate after my little tour of current MMOs. It isn't as hugely fun as it was two years ago, but it's the most fun of what is available. For me anyway. I guess someone who loves ratracing, raiding one dungeon map for a year to get a piece of equipment, camping spawns, snail-like movement speeds, etc will find other MMOs more fun.
But CoX isn't a good medium for rp. Perhaps some hardcore Virtuenites have great success using the costume creator for
roleplaying, but me, I'm cursed with a powergaming streak. I find it hard to stroll around a
mission emoting, so in the end I just end up not saying much, charging on and on to the next
spawn and dragging everyone after me.
Basically, when I play CoX, I have the urge to do a communal 3rd person shooter, not roleplay. That's why I'm using Rental Shivan during the Friday sessions -- Shivans don't talk or do anything, they just lumber forward and throw balls of radiation at mobs, right? :)
I think the problem with doing dedicated rp is that you have to allocated a large time chunk to it. During my brief stints of returning to rp in RoD (when I got bored of mkilling and pkilling), rpers in OSI complained to me that I was rping too slowly...since I wasn't on for hours every evening waiting for rp with person after person. Sorry -- just like I don't feel like doing hours and hours of "obligatory" mob-running, Hamidon-raiding, etc, I don't feel like sitting around doing hours and hours of obligatory rp, which more often than not involved idling on some rp character waiting for the right people to turn up.
Perhaps a scheduled, rp-focused event needs to be scheduled at regular times for the best rp action to happen. This leads me to wondering if there are adult tabletop gamers in Singapore. Or is this one of those "kiddie games" that only teenagers play? Besides Faya and our old group, I only know two other people who used to play tabletop games -- but only when they were young.
Is it possible for a bunch of adults to sit around a table and act out their dorky imagination? Or has adult society brainwashed us into trying to act mature, stifling our ability to roleplay?
I think my rp interest has shifted slowly from the more hack-and-slash of AD&D to the drama-focused White Wolf LARP-type games. I wonder if it is possible to start up tabletop sessions again with the White Wolf games...
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Grinding Hell?
Is it grinding when you don’t feel bored?
That’s a question I’m wrestling with as I face down my three and four letter personality types. I’m an EAS and an INTP.
What’s that mean in terms of CoX? Well, the Explorer in me was really happy for the period where stuff was new – be it the city of heroes or villains and I wanted to try out everything at least once, just to know what it felt like. After having climbed the RoD equipment treadmill, my Achiever side now looks upon loot as something that’s not strictly necessary anymore, not if the activities are going to be boring as hell. Hence, I stopped attending Hami raids religiously after the third time or so, and I don’t really have a driving need to conquer the RSF now that I’ve seen all five missions (though it would be nice to at least win once.)
My lack of a Killer side means I don’t really consider PvP interesting at all, and my Socializer side is pretty much take it or leave it. One or two teams a fortnight when I’m feeling a teaming urge essentially satisfies any craving for company.
However, my Achiever side still finds odd ways out. Some I’m not willing to indulge because the activities are boring. I’ll pick up a badge when I can, I’m even crazed enough to play in the occassional badge farm for rare things like Valentine Day badges and so on, but there’s a limit to how much nonsense I’ll put up with for a badge. (Leaving one’s computer on to stand in lava to take damage, for example, seems pointless.) My point is, that for me, not doing anything in CoX is boring activity number 1.
That’s why I cannot stand tanks who have a driving need to herd up the whole goddamn map and say “Stand here.” I go stir-crazy. At least if he says “Here, you herd this side, and I herd that side,” at least I get to do something, and I don’t go berserk with boredom as soon.
That’s why I am unfortunately one of those seemingly attention deficit characters who will start hopping and jumping while waiting for people, just for the lack of anything better to do. And will start sniping street mobs (that I know I can kill) so that I am at least doing –something- and not just standing around.
That’s why after a while of teaming, I will start to itch endlessly to be off on my own because there isn’t so much waiting time involved. Except on rare teams that can move at as fast a pace as I like and take my breath away, then I hang on and enjoy myself immensely.
Interestingly enough, some people don’t like repetition and classify that as boring activity number 1. Not so for me, that’s a secondary consideration.
So that’s why I am perfectly happy going after “Defeat 25 X mobs” on the street while they scream in frustration. Or just street hunting by myself. Or pre-I5, herding DE in Crey’s Folly and burning them all down by my lonesome. That’s why I’m perfectly okay grinding newspaper and pvp missions up to a certain extent.
They like contacts and story arcs. In my opinion, it’s just as repetitive, it’s just more masked, that’s all. In fact, it’s sometimes downright tedious if the travel time is extended across various zones. Travel time = doing nothing. And remember, in my definition, doing nothing = boring.
Here’s something else that is very frustrating (if not boring) to my shadow Achiever side = read: the Perfectionist. I cannot stand defeat. Or an unfair fight where the advantage is to the opponent. That’s probably why I stay out of PvP. It’s a freaking game that I play for escapist reasons, so I want to win, thank you very much. I do not want to get pasted on the floor 9 times because your stupid enemy has way too many hitpoints for his own good, and hits like a bulldozer when I get a stupid pillow weapon, and end up spending half my time outside the mission traveling back instead.
Debt? I don’t care about debt. It’s racked back up very fast. I care about wasted time. And being unable to progress with a mission is wasted time. A setback or two is fine, not five, six, seven times in a row.
So yea, I find it very hard to play the game the ‘proper’ way, talking to contacts and doing story arcs and facing probable defeat every time the mission throws a PtoD EB at me (not to mention, more wasted time cranking the difficulty slider up and down because EBs are only seen at villainous – while the minions become too easy.)
Meanwhile, the dark side is calling out its siren song to my Achiever. Come to me, it says. Come to the PvP zones. Turn on Herostats. Go /hide and go solo the missions. See how much xp you are racking up? It’s faster than anything a team can achieve, by the simple fact that people take their own time in a team and don’t arrive as fast as you at the mission door. Can you see that purple bar rising visibly? Do you realize you just don’t die as often (or at all) when you’re not facing insane enemies?
I see all this and before I know it, I am in the pvp zones madly grinding xp. The thing that usually stops me is that the repetition (secondary boredom consideration) eventually overcomes the Achiever urge, and I walk off looking for something novel to do, maybe away from the computer, even.
But now, har. I am going to hell. I am turning fully to the dark side. Because I have hit upon a way that defeats the repetition. Or rather deflects it so that I am no longer consciously aware of it.
Some people watch TV while they game. That’s not possible for me because I have no TV in my room, and refuse to go through weird contortions moving my laptop in front of the TV and burning out my mobile video card.
But I now DO have a dual screen monitor system. :P
And while I’m not dual-boxing because I’m not paying for a second account, I have figured out that cranking down the graphics to low/low/no shadows/etc. means that my video card is capable of rendering without jerkiness or horrible blinky lines CoX on the big monitor, and playing a DVD movie on the smaller monitor…
I am definitely going to hell. :)
Now the repetition becomes a PLUS point instead of a minus. See, I’m still doing something. It’s still my actions controlling my character gaining the xp. I’m not standing around asking someone else to PL me. I’m not using some cheap ass exemplar exploit to PL an alt. But I -am- PLing myself at the maximum solo rate possible, and I’m staving off boredom from repetition because I don’t even NOTICE the repetition.
Instead of counting off, omg, 53 more warburg missions before I hit the next level…
I’m thinking, woot, yet another 45 minute episode of Charmed (Pirates of the Carribean/Xena/LOTR/insert DVD name here) I can watch. The novelty is now in the constantly changing story of the show.
It’s the best of both worlds. When you’re grinding xp, your hands are busy but your brain is half on autopilot. When you’re watching TV, your hands desperately need something to do (hence why I like to paint minis or make cardstock during the same time), while your brain is also half on autopilot.
Now my hands are kept busy, and my brain is fully occupied as my eyes dance from one screen to the other.
It sounds completely crazy, but it works. It works amazingly well as I pull ahead of all the others in the HTTT dominator pack and jump to second highest at lvl 47 (the first is already lvl 50) while the rest are all still about lvl 45, maybe getting to lvl 46 at best.
I’m shamelessly indulging my dark side here. I don’t know why I am so competitive in this aspect. Maybe because I’m irritated with people who don’t acknowledge me or my perspective. Maybe because I want to prove that ‘my side is –more- right and more equal’ than your side to the cautious team players. A reckless solo player can earn more xp faster than a cautious team player. Fact. And I’m gonna prove it.
Of course, it’s a self-evident truth that gaining xp is NOT the most important thing in CoX. On the contrary. After this, I’ll probably ease off, put my graphics back to less cartoony and more aah-nice factor and start putzing around on my concept alts again and PUG team to balance things out.
But there’s something about that last push to 50 that makes ya wanna grind it out to reach the finish line, and having a whole pack of other people to race against, that really brings out the Achiever in me.
And I haven’t indulged it for so long. I think it’s time to spoil it a little. After all, those LOTR extended edition DVDs are still in the closet somewhere. :)
P.S. I hear the LOTR MMO is in closed beta right now. I signed up for it, not sure if I’ll get an invite or not. Truth to tell, it doesn’t sound very innovative. It looks fairly standard, and the two things that are a bit out of the ordinary are group combo attacks and a ‘monster play’ pvp style where you can play a monster in a certain zone and attack real players. Those are intriguing enough that I’d like to see the beta, but not sure if I’d be willing to pay to play.
Something that sounds very innovative is Ncsoft’s Aion. Wings! Wings and more wings! A 3D space MMO where nearly everything is winged, angels vs demon types, and aerial combat is supposedly a very important part of the game. 3D combat would be wicked if they could pull it off well. Of course, since it’s a Korean-produced game (I think), one needs to be very wary of the phat lewt gameplay style they might mix into it. *sighs*
That’s a question I’m wrestling with as I face down my three and four letter personality types. I’m an EAS and an INTP.
What’s that mean in terms of CoX? Well, the Explorer in me was really happy for the period where stuff was new – be it the city of heroes or villains and I wanted to try out everything at least once, just to know what it felt like. After having climbed the RoD equipment treadmill, my Achiever side now looks upon loot as something that’s not strictly necessary anymore, not if the activities are going to be boring as hell. Hence, I stopped attending Hami raids religiously after the third time or so, and I don’t really have a driving need to conquer the RSF now that I’ve seen all five missions (though it would be nice to at least win once.)
My lack of a Killer side means I don’t really consider PvP interesting at all, and my Socializer side is pretty much take it or leave it. One or two teams a fortnight when I’m feeling a teaming urge essentially satisfies any craving for company.
However, my Achiever side still finds odd ways out. Some I’m not willing to indulge because the activities are boring. I’ll pick up a badge when I can, I’m even crazed enough to play in the occassional badge farm for rare things like Valentine Day badges and so on, but there’s a limit to how much nonsense I’ll put up with for a badge. (Leaving one’s computer on to stand in lava to take damage, for example, seems pointless.) My point is, that for me, not doing anything in CoX is boring activity number 1.
That’s why I cannot stand tanks who have a driving need to herd up the whole goddamn map and say “Stand here.” I go stir-crazy. At least if he says “Here, you herd this side, and I herd that side,” at least I get to do something, and I don’t go berserk with boredom as soon.
That’s why I am unfortunately one of those seemingly attention deficit characters who will start hopping and jumping while waiting for people, just for the lack of anything better to do. And will start sniping street mobs (that I know I can kill) so that I am at least doing –something- and not just standing around.
That’s why after a while of teaming, I will start to itch endlessly to be off on my own because there isn’t so much waiting time involved. Except on rare teams that can move at as fast a pace as I like and take my breath away, then I hang on and enjoy myself immensely.
Interestingly enough, some people don’t like repetition and classify that as boring activity number 1. Not so for me, that’s a secondary consideration.
So that’s why I am perfectly happy going after “Defeat 25 X mobs” on the street while they scream in frustration. Or just street hunting by myself. Or pre-I5, herding DE in Crey’s Folly and burning them all down by my lonesome. That’s why I’m perfectly okay grinding newspaper and pvp missions up to a certain extent.
They like contacts and story arcs. In my opinion, it’s just as repetitive, it’s just more masked, that’s all. In fact, it’s sometimes downright tedious if the travel time is extended across various zones. Travel time = doing nothing. And remember, in my definition, doing nothing = boring.
Here’s something else that is very frustrating (if not boring) to my shadow Achiever side = read: the Perfectionist. I cannot stand defeat. Or an unfair fight where the advantage is to the opponent. That’s probably why I stay out of PvP. It’s a freaking game that I play for escapist reasons, so I want to win, thank you very much. I do not want to get pasted on the floor 9 times because your stupid enemy has way too many hitpoints for his own good, and hits like a bulldozer when I get a stupid pillow weapon, and end up spending half my time outside the mission traveling back instead.
Debt? I don’t care about debt. It’s racked back up very fast. I care about wasted time. And being unable to progress with a mission is wasted time. A setback or two is fine, not five, six, seven times in a row.
So yea, I find it very hard to play the game the ‘proper’ way, talking to contacts and doing story arcs and facing probable defeat every time the mission throws a PtoD EB at me (not to mention, more wasted time cranking the difficulty slider up and down because EBs are only seen at villainous – while the minions become too easy.)
Meanwhile, the dark side is calling out its siren song to my Achiever. Come to me, it says. Come to the PvP zones. Turn on Herostats. Go /hide and go solo the missions. See how much xp you are racking up? It’s faster than anything a team can achieve, by the simple fact that people take their own time in a team and don’t arrive as fast as you at the mission door. Can you see that purple bar rising visibly? Do you realize you just don’t die as often (or at all) when you’re not facing insane enemies?
I see all this and before I know it, I am in the pvp zones madly grinding xp. The thing that usually stops me is that the repetition (secondary boredom consideration) eventually overcomes the Achiever urge, and I walk off looking for something novel to do, maybe away from the computer, even.
But now, har. I am going to hell. I am turning fully to the dark side. Because I have hit upon a way that defeats the repetition. Or rather deflects it so that I am no longer consciously aware of it.
Some people watch TV while they game. That’s not possible for me because I have no TV in my room, and refuse to go through weird contortions moving my laptop in front of the TV and burning out my mobile video card.
But I now DO have a dual screen monitor system. :P
And while I’m not dual-boxing because I’m not paying for a second account, I have figured out that cranking down the graphics to low/low/no shadows/etc. means that my video card is capable of rendering without jerkiness or horrible blinky lines CoX on the big monitor, and playing a DVD movie on the smaller monitor…
I am definitely going to hell. :)
Now the repetition becomes a PLUS point instead of a minus. See, I’m still doing something. It’s still my actions controlling my character gaining the xp. I’m not standing around asking someone else to PL me. I’m not using some cheap ass exemplar exploit to PL an alt. But I -am- PLing myself at the maximum solo rate possible, and I’m staving off boredom from repetition because I don’t even NOTICE the repetition.
Instead of counting off, omg, 53 more warburg missions before I hit the next level…
I’m thinking, woot, yet another 45 minute episode of Charmed (Pirates of the Carribean/Xena/LOTR/insert DVD name here) I can watch. The novelty is now in the constantly changing story of the show.
It’s the best of both worlds. When you’re grinding xp, your hands are busy but your brain is half on autopilot. When you’re watching TV, your hands desperately need something to do (hence why I like to paint minis or make cardstock during the same time), while your brain is also half on autopilot.
Now my hands are kept busy, and my brain is fully occupied as my eyes dance from one screen to the other.
It sounds completely crazy, but it works. It works amazingly well as I pull ahead of all the others in the HTTT dominator pack and jump to second highest at lvl 47 (the first is already lvl 50) while the rest are all still about lvl 45, maybe getting to lvl 46 at best.
I’m shamelessly indulging my dark side here. I don’t know why I am so competitive in this aspect. Maybe because I’m irritated with people who don’t acknowledge me or my perspective. Maybe because I want to prove that ‘my side is –more- right and more equal’ than your side to the cautious team players. A reckless solo player can earn more xp faster than a cautious team player. Fact. And I’m gonna prove it.
Of course, it’s a self-evident truth that gaining xp is NOT the most important thing in CoX. On the contrary. After this, I’ll probably ease off, put my graphics back to less cartoony and more aah-nice factor and start putzing around on my concept alts again and PUG team to balance things out.
But there’s something about that last push to 50 that makes ya wanna grind it out to reach the finish line, and having a whole pack of other people to race against, that really brings out the Achiever in me.
And I haven’t indulged it for so long. I think it’s time to spoil it a little. After all, those LOTR extended edition DVDs are still in the closet somewhere. :)
P.S. I hear the LOTR MMO is in closed beta right now. I signed up for it, not sure if I’ll get an invite or not. Truth to tell, it doesn’t sound very innovative. It looks fairly standard, and the two things that are a bit out of the ordinary are group combo attacks and a ‘monster play’ pvp style where you can play a monster in a certain zone and attack real players. Those are intriguing enough that I’d like to see the beta, but not sure if I’d be willing to pay to play.
Something that sounds very innovative is Ncsoft’s Aion. Wings! Wings and more wings! A 3D space MMO where nearly everything is winged, angels vs demon types, and aerial combat is supposedly a very important part of the game. 3D combat would be wicked if they could pull it off well. Of course, since it’s a Korean-produced game (I think), one needs to be very wary of the phat lewt gameplay style they might mix into it. *sighs*