The brothers are back

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.

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.

New Computer = AWSOME!

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.

Traveling in style around the Rogue Isle

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

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.

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.