The Ursine Master Conspiracy

Champions Online: So what has be so enthralled?

2009-12-15T02:27:00.000-08:00

The last month and a half I have been casually playing Champions Online, instead of WoW... When I first tried it I was unsure if I would play the game past the first month's subscription with the game.

It first tempted me over Halloween, when they had their first content patch and seasonal event. Blood Moon. I never got to see the actual content, because I was stuck on the tutorial zone... which was in itself very active and lively. An alien race was invading Mellenium City, and all around you explosions were happening, people were fighting and trading deaths on the front lines, alien spawn eggs were popping out of the ground and so forth.

I had trouble with one of the first quests, because it involved learning this "Block" command... being trained on WoW and CoX, you just tap a button and it's suppose to work. Not so in this case, which brings me to the first feature... Champions Online is very much an action oriented MMORPG. Every hero has a block option which needs to be held down to work... it is often the only way to survive big animation attacks from enemy mobs. But as I explored more, powers had several different functions depending on how you control them.

Many powers have an option for charging the power for a bigger effect. Some have combo effects when you tap it multiple times, some powers even have healing effects and damaging effects depending on who the target it.

The second feature I found to love, after playing with the game some... and which took my head some time to wrap around is the power sets. Unlike many games, the character creator bombards you with several options for starting powers... including a custom build that lets you mix and match. However each power set seems rather limited with how many choices you get... that is until you realize that every power set is open to you from the start. The only real penalty is that you wont unlock all your main power tiers early... each power teir requires X number of powers from your main set or X+2 general powers. That means anything is possible for character creation... you wanna mix fire and ice? Go for it... Super Strength with lazer eye beams? Why not!?

The third most interesting part, which has many new players confused is the open class system... in essence there is no power sets that are required for tanking or damage or even support... While it is true there are only limited healing sets, a support character doesn't always heal. Each power set has crowd control properties, and holding a mob in place so it goes down faster can sometimes be just as good as healing.

Every player has 4 builds to choose from, they generically alter the stats of your character to preform better at a specific job. Guardians are the standard unmodified base. Protectors have enhanced HP, Higher energy regeneration when blocking, but lower attack power for tanks. Avengers can crank out the damage with higher damage output, but lower HP. Sentential are the support role, with increased effect to heals, holds, and debuffs, and increased energy... but lower HP and Damage output.

You can change the roles every 45 seconds, but just slapping on the role doesn't make you an instant tank, support, or DPS monster. That is where the custom power sets come in handy... you need to choose powers that compliment the role you wish to play. But you can have just about anything... not always inline with traditional roles. You could have a firecaster be a tank, a fast pace ninja who can dodge anything, a mighty robot in power armor. The other half is equipment. Fortunately equipment is only about 45% of your overall stats, making it important, but not the be all and end all. Your powers have primary buffs that help their effectiveness, but every stat is important in it's own way... a super strong hero can still gain huge benifet from intelligence to lower the energy costs of his attacks. Presence helps healers primarily, but fire hurling DPS machines get some threat reduction from presence as well.

So that is a brief primer on Champions Online... I suggest giving the game a try if you're after a more action oriented casual game... involving super powered beings... with a bit of freedom, both in character creation, powers, and roles.

I'm back! And more super then ever!

2009-12-14T02:40:00.000-08:00

Hello true believers,

The Ursine Master is up and at them again. After a lengthy return to the World of Warcraft, and re-shelving of my account... I've been giving a new game a shot. Champions online. I'll go into more detail tommorow... but needless to say, the Ursine Master has taken a new turn for the side of "good"... his unreliable minions replaced by robotic creatures and his crude pistols replaced with a sonic blaster!

Aberrant New World of Darkness conversion has bit jumped into overdrive these last two months. My ultimate goal now is to make a published book of the rules including some new photoshoped graphics like the one to the right. Obviously due to copywright laws, it wont be a widly published rule set... cafepress.com can do print on demand with perfect binding and a full color cover... to which I can sell at cost to a few people who might want it.

Before I get to that stage, I'm going to have to heavily play test it first. My usual crew will probally start up again in January... I've also had some inquries from the bear community in the twin cities... and also some possible interest in the Madison Area, which last weekend I traveled down to to experience a tottally different LARP experience. Serenity: The Signal Wars.

So stay tuned as the Master gets back into the grove of writing again.

When it all comes down to it...

2009-04-08T21:44:00.000-07:00

The thing to remember about online games is that it's the people that make it fun. CoX may not be the most technical game in the world, nor the most graphically advanced. But it is a great sandbox that easily allows you to play with friends. Add to it the Ventrillo server we purchased for a year, and you can have an fun night of stress reduction with good friends.

The above photo consists of 2 Dominators, 3 corruptors, and 1 master mind... In many games this combination wouldn't be able to do anything... however durring a canister delivery mission, we could easily waste large groups of longbow (those super jerks). Me and the other dominator would hold them in one place, while our corruptors would rain down firey, staticy, and explosive AoE attacks. One of our corruptors also is an accomplished healer, (and rest of the group can accomplish some healing messures), and for those pesky lutenents we have zombies rush in to tank. It was alot of fun to see how many groups we could take at once. We made comments, we laughed, and everyone had a great time... which is once again, the essence of the MMO game.

Thank you CoX for making so many options that allow for ease of teaming up with your friends... and keep up the good work.

Who Watches the Watchmen? Me apperently.

2009-03-31T23:39:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I had my first taste of the Watchmen franchise. Not knowing anything about it, I thought the director did an excellent job. From the comic pages I've seen, it appears that they were very faithful to the story (san the change to the ending of course). I also liked the obvious problems that each character had as a result of their "powers"... I relaize that only Dr. Manhatten was the only obvious superpowered being, but each had transended basic human limitations... giving each character a few levels of Mega-Attributes (as per the Aberrant game).

Dr. Manhatten is an excellent inspiration for any Terrigan character, as he moves beyond humanity, even though he cares for them in a sense, he clearly knows to be above them as a god... his aberrations are many and obvious... it's little wonder he goes off the planet to create new life... which parralels Divis Mal in Aberrant... who will later leave earth as well to go create his own universe.

Silk Spectre and Nite Owl are realitivly "normal"with a few minor mental quirks, but have weathered crime fighting really well.

Ozy has my favorite line in the whole movie, "Do you think I'm some comic book villain? That I would tell you my master stroke if there was a remote chance you could stop me? I triggered it 35 minutes ago." Defenatly a Megalomanic who's good at it. His power had a higher price.

Rorshach also a defantly potent human with several mental issues... the price for justice often can lead to madness when you see the worst in humanity all the time.

Overall, I recomend the film to comic fans... it was well put together and kept me guessing to the end... and the "villians" plan was quite brilliant. The violence and sex were done just well enough in contrast with some off color music that clashed with the scene to a point (but we're well chosen). It reminded me of the idea I heard from a friend in High School who would start a movie with the "Cola Wars" between Pepsi and Coke, with one side raiding the other and shooting gangster style with "Everything is Beautiful" as the backgroud music.

As a secondary opinion, it's nice to see the taboo of male nudity being challenged in this film... I found it far less distracting after the first time it happened then other films that use every trick in the book to cover up bits and peices... Beowulf comes to mind in that example... Fighting grendel was an awsome fight, but the convenetly placed table or arm or cup or whatever just got to be distracting. It worked for Austin Powers, because it was a comedy... but for Beowulf it just got to be too much. With any luck directors will take their R rated films or NR films and not try to work around bits and peices like they have in the past and just move on to make awsome films.

Aberrant v1.4 Rules

2009-03-24T23:03:00.000-07:00

After another rousing adventure of Aberrant with my testing group, a number of issues and confusion came up... as well as some new content dying to come to the four front... so it's time for me to buckle down at work and go over some new issues. Here is the primary list

1. Look at all Resistance specs to powers

In the NWoD system there are three kinds of actions... Instant, Extended, and Contested.

Instant are generally an Attribute + Skill + Equipment - Modifier... A single successes is all that is needed to beat the challenge. These represent something simple like making the jump from building top to building top... or picking a simple lock.

Extended are similar, but generally require a number of successes to achieve the final goal.. such as crafting a sword could be 5 successes for a simple crude weapon up to 25-50 for masterwork... or doing research on a werewolf for weaknesses that aren't just folklore.

Contested compare successes when two people are competing in the same objective, such as a hacker and system admin fighting in cyberspace over a system... or two people running a marathon.

Combat gets sticky though... most challenges in combat have been reverted to instant actions, which tends to make things go faster without contested actions every time someone throws a punch... but some powers in combat are not well suited for simple actions... So my task is to go through and see what type of action makes the most sense. This is going to be the messiest part.

2. New Power: Body Modifications...

This power in the old aberrant system was a power bought once at a specific cost and had a permanent effect... such as gills allowing you to breath under water, wall crawling abilities, or extra arms... I have to decide if I want the "power" to simply be a merit based (by once and forget) or a level 1 power (Giving the Nova an equipment like bonus for certain situations).

3. Quantum Power Level chart

The current chart appears pretty weak with little incentive to raise it (except to shoot past 1-5 to 6 where you become able to purchase level 4 powers) I plan to raise the regeneration of temporary quantum pool for each level... I might tinker with the max temp pool... and most importantly, I'm going to take a hard look at the degeneration penalty.

Characters have a morality scale, which keeps them in line from doing horrible monstrous things... the theroy with the super heroes is the more potent they become, the more separated from humanity they are... however the degeneration penalty seems quite harsh... to get a similar effect with separation with humanity I think can fall into aberrations forced upon the nova's when they hit Level 3, 5, and 8 (out of 10).

4. Node Background Negatives... which are similar to Quantum Power Level chart... it has the same problem. To fix this, I'm tempted to add a low level derangement at level 2 or 3... and progress to the more sever derangement at 4 or 5... the thought is the Node is a lump of grey matter in the Nova's brain that allows super powers. It starts as the size of a peanut, but can grow to be the size of a softball... which puts alot of pressure on the brain in ways not necessarily healthy. So it's up for scrutiny.

5. Chrysalis... one of my players is starting to get quite tainted on purpose... the Teragen see taint and aberrations as evolution... but dangerous. Their leader has developed a process of controlled evolution called Chrysalis. Using a deep philosophy guild in their process... they acquire taint points and channel it during a hibernation/cocoon period. This can lead to new powers, changes in aberrations, and a deep set attitude change... But how will I implement it in my game... as it's got a great potential for role play... but it also serves as a potential game breaker mechanically.

So I've got my work cut out for me... There are a few more powers that are floating around in my head that a unique enough that they warrant their own page in my book... but my main focus is clearer now.

More updates to come.

The brothers are back

2009-03-23T22:44:00.000-07:00

The picture today is of Jacob Lux and Oswald Smith...

Two characters that were created for a werewolf LARP about 6-7 years ago... but have been a constant blast to play and has inspired several written stories and several game sessions encompassing the range of emotions and situations.

Oswald (a bear changer - on the right in the picture), was my character who has had a lingering online presence in both WoW and CoX... WoW was a Bear Tank Druid of course... and in CoX he's a brute (the current make is Shields and Super Strength)

The player of Jake, has since followed me to CoX and created his time tested Get of Fenris (Battle Axe and Invincibility Brute - on the left in the picture). Which has given CoX a nice revitalising shot for me. We once again get to have more exploits and adventures as our two favorite characters. Back in the werewolf game, we were in essence saving the world... but we were hardly considered "heroes"... so the villain side is a perfect home for Jake and Oswald.

Even better is in CoX is the fact that we are forever "packed" in a Leveling Pact. After a few months of playing with another friend and leveling pacts... I gotta say that I love the feature.

To review: Leveling Pacts are a bond created between two characters under level 5. It then takes all experience and divides it equally between the two toons to make sure they are always the same level and experience level. This includes if the other character is offline.

This includes if you create a pact at different levels. A level 5 toon would simply donate all experience gained to his pact mate until they were caught up.

In experiencing this, I've run into only one minor inconvenience and several benefits.

It does take twice as long to level a character if you solo alot... however for the ability to have the same level toon to play with when your friend is around is great. I've noticed also that it's a great way to grind money and prestige for the super base... since only experience is divided... you get full money for each mission and kill. More missions and killing mean more money.

The other great benefit for altoholics... like my friend... we have two separate pacts started... Oswald and Jake are Group A and His healer/blaster and my Stalker is Group B

He will often play his healer character with Oswald tanking... and while we are earning more experience in a group (divided by half)... we are in fact leveling 4 toons at once and making some good money in the process (since you always get more xp and money in a group)

The system is pretty good, but obviously has some room for improvements...

1. I would like to be able to form a pact with toons higher then level 5... even if they make it so that I can only form the pact within 5 levels... that would be a nice touch for my old characters who were leveled partially before Issue 13 came out.

2. Leveling pacts with a group bigger then 2 - I have about 5 friends all online in CoX now... and it would be truly awesome to set up a super group that all stay the same level... divide the experience 5 ways... it shouldn't unbalance the game any... So I hope they are able to implement it after Issue 14 comes out. (which in itself will be awesome too)

The brothers live again! Now I just gotta convince my in character brother Walter to join the dark side.

Slouching in the updates... but for good reason.

2009-03-19T23:01:00.000-07:00

Between mining mindlessly in Eve online, funding our new Super base in City of Villains, and most importantly, testing out the open Beta for issue 14 Architect in City of Villains... I've been quite busy.

Architect is quite a bit more robust then I first thought it would be... for those not in fully up to day on City of X issues... Architect allows players to go to a content studio in game, and create full fledged missions. You can then publish them and other heroes/villains can try them out and get Experience and "Tickets" (like skeet ball tickets) to turn in for digital goodies.

It uses the natural mission randomizer already in the game, which uses your character level, Difficulty level, and number of teammates you have in your party to dictate what level the mobs/bosses are and how many pop up. You can direct the difficulty somewhat, but changing the difficulty to be easy at first and ramp up as you move along, keep it even through out, or start off with the hard baddies and have them get less difficult as you progress. But all that in consideration, you have a surprising amount of freedom in creating missions...

You can set as many objectives as you like, being grabbing objects, killing everyone, killing a boss, or escorting someone around. But with a little pre-emptive thinking, you can chain a series of objectives together to make a compelling scenario. There are a number of advanced objectives like adding an ambush or a surprise ally who turns evil... even a mob who's a friend to no one (he/she will rip apart NPC mobs as much as you)

I also enjoy the freedom in creature creation. You can use any of the several NPC mobs groups as bad guys, or create your own complete group from scratch.

Personally I'm borrowing a chapter from the old Werewolf the Apocalypse LARP, and creating the Monkey King Pack and Elder Black Spiral Dancer (the latter who gave a legitimate challenge to my character). The creator allows you to create various levels of bad guy, from regular boss to epic, to arch villain... much like how they are situated now in game. You can choose how experienced they are (which dictates how many powers they know in a specific powerset). And of course a primary and secondary power set. You can mix and match to your heart's content... combine the gun totting power of assault rifle (from the blasters/corrupter)... with the invincibility of Invincibility (from the tankers/brutes). Or give a full fledged self healing power to your high DPS brute... and of course, flight is an option for everyone. Not all combinations are equal, but you have a wide variety to play with and easily edit later.

The map list is pretty extensive, and once this version is live, the next step in creation is to make fully custom maps. But the range of map size is and variety is good enough for most missions.

The last aspect I really like is the nitpicking, customizing almost every aspect of the encounter and the text revolving around the mission. Down to the text that it gives you when you are interrupted in collecting a quest item and what the NPC boss says when he/she flees at 25% health.

Hopefully any bugs found are quickly ironed out and the system is found to be stable on the servers... so we can get this gem of a feature out on live servers asap.

The boys are back in town...

2009-03-09T23:20:00.001-07:00

So over the weekend, I reached high enough of a level to purchase my last summon power on Ursine Master... I now have all 6 minions I can directly control... (plus 10 more if I decide to start a gang war)... so eat your heart out, hunters in WoW and Warhammer.

Over the weekend I also managed to snag a Warhammer Online invite and an Eve Online trial to get my feet wet on some other games. Warhammer is ok, but alot like WoW for better or worse... the chaos metamorph class is pretty cool concept... but it's alot like playing a warrior in Warcraft. Thus far I highly doubt I'll purchase the full game.

Eve I decided to grab a free trial account to see the new changes, espcally with the patch going on right now (March 10th)... trying to get a feel for the game. If City of Villians doesn't keep my interest, Eve is the likely candiate right now...

After watching my friend play Warcraft over the weekend, I just was not excited to pick it up again... The other potential option for gaming entertainment is to use my steam account to download Saints Row 2 or Left4Dead.

Aberrant v1.3 rules complete

2009-03-06T02:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I think I've gotten everything up to date on my v1.3 of New World of Darkness conversion of Aberrant. As soon as I am able to upload the rule set to google docs, I'll post a link to share. It's a smashing good time! (Yeah, I was trying a little too hard to make a joke about the post and the photo...)

Included in the update

New Powers:

Quantum Conversion - Make energy from your hands for everyday usage

Quantum Construct: Create creatures out of thin air to do your bidding.

ESP: Eavesdrop or spy on your friends and enemies from another room or from across town.

Chimerical Aberration: Gain mastery over your taint and change your hindrances into a different form that is less debilitating... at least for a little while.

Transfer/Absorb Aberrations: get rid of those pesky glowing eyes or chitin skin for a while...

Updated Powers:

Level Technique Enhancements - Added the ability to expand techniques to powers like temporal manipulation, elemental anima, or telepathy for a flat 5xp. It gives no bonus to the powers themselves, just unlocks more tricks they can do each level.

Clone - clarified quantum and willpower pools for the clones.

Phasing - added a brawl trick for phasing a hand inside your enemy and resolidifying it doing massive damage.

Plasticity - added a combat boost taking advantage of range and strange maneuvering.

Merged mental and social "armor" to one power, giving some ease on overspending on powers.

Added a bunch of new aberrations and enhancements from the mega-trait books (still awaiting the mega-physical attributes book... go sproket!)

Did a basic conversion of the nova specific drugs from the main core book, including Mox, Mite, and Soma.

Posting to come soon!

Any constructive comments on the conversion are welcomed.

New Computer = AWSOME!

2009-03-04T02:16:00.000-08:00

So my tax return has come and gone... although this year I spent it on something a little more flamboyant. I found a nice quad core amd, 4gb ram, vista 64bit HP computer from the now dead Circuit city for just under 500 bucks. Added a 512mb DDR3 ATI graphics card with the dti cable... then found a smokin' acer 24" monitor on clearence at office depot...

The final result is a very inexpesive and very very nice gaming machine.

My first surprise on play City of Villians was all these orange things on the ground. I was zoomed out (since playing a mastermind is not unlike playing an RTS game)... I zoom in and I find a large pile of empty bullet casings littering the ground that roll around and out of the way as I walk over them.

See for yourself, bullets everywhere!

I also swung the camera around after fighting a gravity controller boss (who has one power that pulls a large object from the nethervoid and flings it at a target) to find a junkyard of discarded flung objects (including a fire hydrant, car, dumpster, and peices of modern art).

The other nice upgrade is to the character and world models... as you can see by the pictures. Which still runs very smoothly.

For an out dated game, it still looks pretty good.

My next task is to load up Eve (either a new trial account or reactivate my old game)... also I may have to borrow my friends account on WoW to see what settings I can push... never having a computer that could handle this kind of graphic load before, it's really a new experience! I'm almost like a kid in a candy store.

Aberrant: NWoD conversion process

2009-02-23T23:12:00.000-08:00

Another project which I started a few years ago was the New World of Darkness conversion of the less popular white wolf D10 game, Aberrant.

Aberrant was the second of the Trinity line, based on a separate universe from the main world of darkness line.

Aberrant is a super powered genre, where normal humans erupted into super powered beings with immense powers. However unlike the comic book world... people didn't dawn tights and fight crime. Some decided they were more then humans, some decided to make alot of money using their powers for constructive purposes, and some dedicated their lives to a better humanity (for 6 figure salaries and royalties on the action figures).

The world was incredibly diverse with several factions running around with their own ideals and tactics... and the powers you wield were as diverse and customizable as the human spirit.

The down side to the game, it was incredibly broken rules wise and easily lead itself to being overpowered (i.e. I roll 25 dice for damage... you can die now).

Some years pass and White Wolf came out with the New World of Darkness line. They gutted their old D10 system, which was the basis for Aberrant and the World of Darkness, and rethought the system. The product was a much cleaner, more streamlined system. Gone are the days of 3 hour combats that take 1 1/2 minutes in game time. Also the NWoD system created the Live Action Role Play system around the same sheets, which can thus be traded back and forth between system.

However the trinity line was canceled, never slated to have a NWoD conversion... pretty much like the entire genre line.

I found the starts of a conversion based on the NWoD system... and it seem to have a good base set up... after failing to contact the author of the original project, I decided to start tinkering with the system some more, re-balancing powers, making other powers make sense... and of course... make it much easier to customize powers on the fly.

Recently I've found a group of rotating players to test out these rules... hash out the weak spots in play, then rethink and re-tinker until I get some pretty solid results.

Through out this blog, I'll be posting those experiences... and possibly getting feedback from potential followings.

Today's Note... the most broken aspect of the old game... Mega-attributes (most notably strength).

Mega-Strength allows you to lift incredible amounts, and hit really hard. In the old system, you would receive 5 automatic success on damage and strength rolls per rank of the power (ranking from 1-5 dots)... that means you could potentially hit for 25 automatic damage. The problem is most heroes would be hard pressed to attempt to soak more then 10 max. In most cases 15 damage (presuming that the hero was maxed out and very lucky with dice rolls) would knock out... if not outright kill several average starting heroes.

In the NWoD conversion, I've scaled the dice advantage back a bit and made it universal for all attributes. Per each rank of the mega-attribute... the nova (name for the common players) receives 1 automatic success towards his roll, so long as he has one success. Further, at 3 ranks he may reroll 9's and Rank 5 he can reroll 8's.

This way, the character has a major advantage for having such a potent power, but it wont necessarily be an instance knockout each time. Other stats are affected by the mega-attributes, and are reflected accordingly.

So get ready to hulk out! Next I tell some of the tales of the aberrant play testers.

Traveling in style around the Rogue Isle

2009-02-19T22:44:00.000-08:00

As anyone who's played around with City of Heroes/Villains at level 14 you are able to choose your first real travel power (provided you took the prerequisite between level 6 and 14).

I've been mucking around with all four trying to decide which one I like best. Each seem to have a weakness and strength for different situations. Here's a quick breakdown.

Flight: Take to the skys as you say goodbye to gravity. The prereqs for this power are either hover, which is a very slow flight that gives a handy buff to your defense or Air superiority which is an overhand hammer attack that will knock down other fliers. The latter only helps if you can reach the enemy in question, but can be nice if the rest of your team is ground locked and melee. Hover is nice for those that like to stay alive and don't have to make quick movements in battle. Flight itself is also one of the safest travel methods through the sub 35 levels. It uses a fair amount of endurance, so it's not the most ideal in combat on missions, unless you've stacked some pretty heavy endurance reduction slots. There is also the occasional problem of the enemy mob who tags you with a stun that makes you drop like rock and die from the fall.

Pros: Moderate speed, very safe over dangerous zones, defense buffs
Cons: Slight Endurance hog if you need to do anything else

Teleportation: In the blink of an eye, you travel from point A to point B. This power is the heaviest endurance hog but is also the fastest and the most supportive for a team. The prereqs are either teleport friend or teleport foe. The former is handy to summon your teammates to the mission door (especially if there is alot of dangers for them in the way). Summon foe is nice for crowd control pulling. Many times your team can smack down the teleported foe before his friends can react. Teleport itself is a very hands on travel style, as you must teleport a certain distance (usually around 100+ yrds unslotted), then dictate where your next teleport is going to land. It is very fast to travel this way as you can cover 100+ yards in the blink of an eye, but the endurance can be taxed which might lead to you falling out of the sky if you don't watch yourself. Coupled with teleport friend, this has so far been my favorite powers for Ursine Master. Since he can resurrect allies, it's handy to summon them back away from enemy mobs first, then raise them. The other minor issue I had was mobility in combat. While others can run, jump, or fly around with ease... teleportation is not always easy to do on the fly for any real benefit... and if you can't see your destination you can't use this power (so underground levels can get annoying)

Pros: Fast Travel, Great team support
Cons: Very hands on control, Worst drain on endurance, hard to use in combat.

Super Speed: Wiz around faster the lightning with this power. Prereqs are either a superfast volley of punches, which is handy for melee fighters who want another attack ability that does moderate damage over time. Or ranged fighters who want some melee capability. The second power allows for faster ability cooldown recharging for 2 minutes. This is handy for anyone who has moderate cooldowns on abilities, such as healers who have to heal through alot of spike damage quickly, or damage dealers who find themselves on cooldown with all their main abilities often. Superspeed itself is, as one might expect, very speedy as a travel power. The world just transitions by almost so fast that in busy cities you'll find yourself hitting walls often. However this usually isn't a problem since you tend to leave enemies alone, and even if they do hit you once... so long as you survive one hit, you wont be hit again... since you are miles away. This gets thrown out the window if the enemy hits you with a web grenade or similar immobilizing or stun attack. Vertical movement tends to be a problem... so walls can easily become the bane of speedster, unless you posses equipment that allows you to overcome your vertical short comings. The endurance is minimal, so you could keep this toggled in combat, however unless your Internet connection is solid and your computer is up to date with the game, you might have problems overshooting your intended destination.

Pros: 2nd Fastest power, very endurance efficient, nice in close quarters
Cons: Not always safest, Walls are problems

Leaping: Like the incredible hulk, you take to the skies with creative falling techniques. The prereq powers are either a jump attack which has an awesome animation, and can cause enemies to be knocked down. The other ability is combat jumping, which is a toggle power that increases your defense and provides protection from being rooted or knocked down. Both of which are handy. Leaping itself is very endurance efficient and relatively safe. Not as fast as super speed, but you never tend to run into walls. Occasionally there is the sky scraper you can't hit the top of, but those are far and few between. In combat, it's nice for wide open spaces to leave toggled, since it has almost no endurance costs, and can be tactfully used for positioning or reaching flying enemies... and the fine control in falling is optimal enough to hit your targets. However not the easiest to use in close quarters and low ceiling situations.

Pros: Most endurance efficient, awesome combat movement power
Cons: 3rd fastest power, poor in close quarters.

What is the best overall? Depends highly on the needs of the class and character. I've generally kept flying for healers or support toons. Teleportation also is a support friendly powerset. Leaping is great for tankers and brutes, and even scrappers. Superspeed I find handy for ranged damage and stalkers (superspeed + stealth = Love with a long pointy knife). There is also an element of fun with the exploration of the maps... flying is a really nice way to explore the world cause it's slow enough you see the world, but safe enough that you can escape most dangers (look out of the spider glider ships and flying ghosts). The other powers you generally have to worry about where you're going and avoid obstacles and dangers.

A nice addition to the game a while back is the "bank mission" where heroes stop a criminal from robbing a bank, and Villains rob the bank and defeat some hero that is foolish enough to try and stop you. The reward for completing the bank mission is a temporary travel power (generally flight and super leaping). It's usually done before level 14 which will give you a taste for the travel powers before you need to decide.

So get out there and see the world!

Masterminds... lords of the universe

2009-02-17T22:51:00.000-08:00

During my revisit with City of Villains and Heroes, I quickly fell in love with the Mastermind Class. The base premise is you summon minions to your beckon call to fight for you. Much like the hunter class in warcraft (nobody tell BRK there is another hunter like convert). Unlike the hunter class in warcraft though, you eventually can control up to 6 minions at one time... and added in a later patch they have the ability to bodyguard for you, taking a portion of damage for you.

The primary choices you start with takes the form of your fighting force.
1. Mercenaries - Soldiers at your beacon call that are excellent long range gun fighters, and also later employ other military weapons such as explosives and a field medic who can help healing. A merc mastermind will also have the potential to get a super solider formula, that you inject in one of your minions to super charge them for a short time.
Your primary weapon is an assault rifle which can have excellent range and damage for when you feel like getting your hands dirty.

2. Necromancy - Nothing like a mix of magic and zombie brain eating to terrorize the good citizens of paragon city. You control up to 6 zombies of varying strength, who generally crew at people in melee range. They can however be upgraded to cast projectile vomit. Later on, if one happens to die, you can re-raise it as a ghost who has different buff/debuff/damage abilities.
Your primary weapon here is magic spells that damage and lower the enemies ability to hit.

3. Ninjas - One half of the age old battle (thankfully Pirates are not a playable powerset... yet). You are able to summon a handful of ninja warriors who primarily stick to melee range, although they have several ranged tricks too. The classic smoke bomb allows you to hide one of your henchmen allowing him to preform critical strikes against your foes while remaining stealthed.
Your primary weapon is a bow and arrow, which has a handful of techniques for hitting one enemy or several.

4. Robotics - These minions are born (or grown in a clone vat), they are made from titanium and plastic. Armed with lasers, these robots will burn down enemies from a distance. Later on you even get a force field bot who's job is to make sure everyone is protected with their own personal shield, then kill his target with a cold scientific glare of his LED eyes. Metal is stronger then flesh, and much easier to repair with wrench and welder, which a Robotic mastermind is able to do naturally.
Your primary weapon is the sci-fi Pulse Rifle, since it wouldn't be a good sci-fi villain without your own personal lasers to play with.

5. Thugs - Sometimes the best henchmen are found on the street. These gang members are a dime a dozen, but still very useful for shooting down your foes with their dual pistol attacks and brute force super strength. Once you progress some, your lieutenants are able to provide some better leadership (which raises damage output for everyone in your party and your minions). And of course if things get hairy... and 6 minions aren't enough, you can always declare a gang war, which summons 10 more friends to your aid for short time. They are all pretty green though, and little more then human shields... but any that survive might prove to be a loyal minion one day.
Your primary weapons are dual pistols that pack a heavy punch, knocking down smaller foes. It is not a powerset that blasters or corruptors can call upon (unlike assult rifle)... so there will be the occasional toon who picked up every single gun trick, and no minions... running around with pistols trying to kill bad guys. This is not an advisable stradegy for playing a mastermind, as they generally have few hit points and no real damage advantage for direct ranged attacks.

The secondary power set falls into the support category. From storm summoning, to gadgets, to trick arrows, and the recently added pain domination... you take what best suits your play style.

Personally my Merc mastermind took pain domination as his secondary power set, coupled with super speed (which allows all my cooldowns to be cut down dramatically) The powerset mimics the empathy powerset from the hero side, which is almost all healing spells, or buff spells. At level 16 I have 2 offensive attacks with my rifle, otherwise I generally let my minions attack large groups and keep them upright long enough to do all the damage. I'm also valuable in teams, since healing is not as common a talent in CoX compared to other games, such as Warcraft.

My other mastermind took thugs and poison, with slightly different play style, since poison tends to drop enemies defenses and attack power quickly, allowing my boys to pick them off while their weak. And in a pinch, I can throw a ball of poison to heal my minions in trouble.

Traps is another solid secondary choice, giving you the ability to hold your enemy in place long enough for your minions to finish the job. One major problem when fighting mobs is runners. They have little issue running to their friends nearby (and not so nearby) to bring them into the fight, which quickly turns into a clusterfu-.

So fire up your CoX client and sit back. Evil shouldn't be to hard for the CEO's of crime. Let middle management handle the dirty work and you sit back and watch the carnage.

Why City of Heroes/Villians has got my money for now.

2009-02-12T21:41:00.000-08:00

In starting with a blog about gaming habits of a multi-threaded geek, I figure I will start with aspects about why City of Heroes/Villains (hereafter named CoX) has captured my time and money as of late.

A preface, I've played a small gambit of MMO games before this. Starting back with CoX, then moving to Eve Online, then taking the leap to World of Warcraft until recently. While I do enjoy World of Warcraft, I am currently the owner of a laptop, which WoW has a tendency to overheat the videocard. After a couple years the poor thing just couldn't run Warcraft anymore at anything higher then 3 fps... in Naxxramus, that's usually fatal.

So I fired up my old account on CoX and to my surprise several features remained and were added since I last graced Paragon City. A small gambit of new features that were either borrowed from or by other games... and a feature or two that should be in other games.

Basic game play aspects:
1. 5 basic "classes" 2 heroic classes for each side
This is a bit deceiving. Within each class is a multitude of choices for power sets, which allow you to mix and match to suit your playing style. For example, the defenders are consider team support/healers... but not every primary power set has a direct healing capability... several are used to slow up enemies or make them unable to do anything worthwhile to your allys. Or Brutes on the villain side, who have an assortment of high burst damage attacks and a defensive ability... which could take the form of regenerating health super fast, being invincible, or avoiding damage by being agile. Add to the mix the ability to pull from a special pool of powers available to everyone that range from leadership buffs, to Travel powers (flight, super speed, Teleportation, and Super Leaping), to more mundane fighting abilities or stealth.

2. Character generator:
Hands down, CoX has the best character generator of all the MMO's... create virtually anyone you want with hundreds of little options, which can all be color coded. Later in the game you also receive extra slots for different costumes. A tailor in game can change them at will (and money)... and you can earn extra costume pieces in play through invention, events, booster packs.
Another nice touch is with the super power sets that involve weapons, you can customize them now as well. So that nice mace isn't quite your style... well, wield a shovel!

3. Customized missions:
Each mission you take on is instanced. And the difficulty is based on three things. Your level, the number of people in your team, and your difficulty settings. Your level affects the base level of the mobs and boss you fight in the instance. The number of people you have in your group dictates how many mobs you'll be fighting. The Difficulty settings are an optional setting you set with an NPC. It allows you to ramp up the difficulty by up to 5 levels (making the base level of each mob inside the instance 1 level higher.) This makes for a more difficult challenge and of course more money and experience.

4. Sidekick/ Lackey/ Exemplar system:
This wonderful system allows you to play with your friends or join a PUG without missing out on the fun. A higher level toon can artificially raise your level to 1 below them... putting your powers about on par with the enemies you'll be facing. Since there is no real equipment to speak of in CoX, you can preform well in a group so long as you stay within range of your mentor. You earn experience as you normally would at your own level. In a similar fashion, Higher level toons can deflate their level down to a lower level toon in order to play with them and not rob experience from them. The benefit for the higher level toon is they get a good chunk of money, and if they have any experience debt (the penalty for dying), all experience they would earn goes to paying off their debt. With this system, you're no longer stuck trying to stay the same level as your friends... which leads me to the next greatest asset.

5. Leveling Pact:
In it's infancy, it is one of the coolest features I've seen in an MMO, and it needs to be implemented in WoW soon. You form a leveling pact with another toon (on a different account obviously). You then split all experience evenly to ensure that you are the same level. Even if the other person is offline. When I came back, a friend of mine decided to dust off his account too, and we've taken full advantage of a couple different pacts. They only major improvement they need to implement is to allow more the 2 people in a single pact.

6. Day Jobs:
In a similar fashion to Eve Online, where you train with time spent on or offline, day jobs allow you to train while off line for special buffs or powers after spending a certain amount of time at a specific spot (like a train station for movement buffs, police station for extra experience from patrolling the streets). Not game breaking, but a nice touch.

7. Team Base Construction
With the recent content patch, bases are a little more affordable to get up and running for small groups. Much like Dark Age of Camelot. You can spend hours tweaking and moving decorative items around, and scrapping up cash to a medical bay or transporter device.

8. Invention System:
A nice touch, similar to crafting in other games... except without the skill ups required. You find recipes, find salvage from defeating enemies, and can make some very nice enhancements (the nearest thing to equipment in the game), or build cheaper upgrades for your base... which is now on a unified system.

9. Global Chat:
You have several alts across villains and heroes, even servers... well if you find a player who's worth knowing, you can allow him access to your global chat name, which allows him to know when you're account is online and which toon your playing. Even allows you to send messages offline to them, and they'll receive it no matter which toon they log onto.

10. Easy to pick up and play
The instance missions allow for a varied groups to accomplish. In a typical 5 man group in Warcraft, you would need a tank, healer, and variety of damage dealers/Crowd Control. While that formula works in CoX, it is not always necessary. It requires some special tactics, utilizing the strengths of a class, but it can be done. For example, My mastermind (a class who controls minions to fight for them) teamed up with 3 other masterminds... and with 16 minions at our beckon call, we pummeled through wave after wave of mobs... mind you many a minion died that day... but they were expendable. And the robotics mastermind had no soul to begin with... so he's even less of a concern.

So within the last year, several changes and upgrades to the game occurred that made it quite fresh... a handful I've not covered here... and 1 in the works for the next content patch. The ability to create full fledged missions, and be rated by the community for play on the live servers.

Next blog post will cover the class that makes my namesake on this blog... The mastermind.

Welcome to the Conspiracy

2009-02-10T21:31:00.000-08:00

This is a test of the Emergency Conspiracy System... were this an actual conspiracy the system would be followed with content about City of Heroes or White Wolf games... possibly including pictures.

Until such a point, please enjoy the music.

This concludes our test of the Emergency Conspiracy System.

Thank you... and I look forward to your future patronage.