With the pre-release download and the warning on the forums about an upcoming freespec (Free power respecification for all characters, for those who don’t speak the COH dialect of English.) it looks like Issue 16: Power Spectrum is just about ready to hit the live servers.  It hit Open Beta on the Test server on August 26, so this is about right in the usual schedule. Having played with it for a little while in Closed Beta and more so in Open, I can say it is a lot of fun.

I spent most of my time either checking out the new colorization and/or animation choices or a couple of the new powersets that were moved around. I also spent a little bit of time looking at the new difficulty system that was added, but not that much.

Pretty Colors

The color customization system is very nice. There are some limitations to it, especially with Dark Melee or other powers like it, because of the way colors are done in the game engine. And some options were blocked because the Devs did not like the way they looked. But the variety that is available is almost overwhelming.

On most powersets, you have a choice between a dark palette and a light palette of colors. You pick 2 colors for each power and can either have those colors automatically shared by all the powers in the set, all powers in both sets, or set each power individually. And you can change the colors for each costume slot, is you want to have different power colors to match a different costume theme.

The new animations are also pretty nice. Not all the powers in Martial Arts and Super Strength have new choices, but the ones that do look good. I was never that bothered with the continuous kicking in MA, but it is nice to be able to add a few punches in.  I have a few quibbles about a couple of SS animations, the ground punch for Footstomp and the new Knock Out Blow animation. The ground punch feels fast and the KO Blow feels like it is taking too long. But those are both because they have to match the times for the original animations, so there is not really a lot that BAB can do about them. And the new KO Blow really looks great if you have a Shield on your arm.

New Powers

Well, sort of. For I15, there was a lot of complaining on the forum about no new powerset proliferation. Well, this time there is plenty going on. Every AT gets at least one new powerset, with several getting two. (Master Minds just can’t get a break on proliferation. Always stuck at getting a new secondary.)

I was in at the end of the Closed Beta, so I did not get to play any of the new sets at a high level, and I only checked out a couple of them. I don’t enjoy playing on Red side that much (Mostly at low levels because of having to do the mayhem missions over and over again for new contacts.) so I looked at a couple of the new possibilities for heroes. And I played them without using my Veteran award attacks. They make low levels extremely easy and I wanted to see what it was like with just the new stuff.

I found the Electric Melee/Electric Armor on a Scrapper to be a lot of fun. Nice protection with great attacks made for a fun romp through the low levels. I especially like the Jacob’s Ladder cone attack. It was very easy to get 2 or even 3 mobs in the area of effect, which is not always true for the melee cone attacks.

I also started up a Traps/Assault Rifle defender to see how that worked out. I did not enjoy it as much as the scrapper, but it was still a lot of fun. And it is a very versatile combination. A primarily teaming defender can pick up the Traps powersets and do very well at helping the team, while a soloer can pick up the AR attacks and go to town on the mobs. And with the ability to have two builds, you can do both builds and suit your powers to your mood.

I really enjoyed both characters as I was playing them, and have already decided that both powerset combos will make it to live when I16 gets there. And I will start up some new alts for most of the other sets also I am sure. Such is the curse of altitis.

Other good stuff

Some other things are showing up in I16 that have been pretty much overshadowed by the color customization and new powersets. This is a shame because they are pretty major changes that have been wanted for quite a while.

First up, there is the change to the Difficulty setting for mission running. Instead of just having 5 levels of difficulty, you can fine tune your adventures. Running an Inv/SS level 50 tank that likes to take on all comers? You can set your difficulty to think you are on an 8 man team, mobs spawning at 2 levels above you, with bosses showing up. (Yeah, been there done that. It rocks being able to jump into huge spawns without worrying about the squishies on a team.) If you are running an Empath defender with lousy attacks, set it to a 1 man team, with the mobs spawning 1 level below you, and no bosses ever show up. Yes, -1 level. A huge help to characters that have problems soloing.

Aside from those settings, you can also control if AVs show up, so if you are one of the folks that like soloing them, you can make it happen with out needing to pad a mission. And that brings up one of the nicest parts of the new system. It should pretty much stop requests for padding teams so someone can farm them for an 8 man team. Farmers can just set their difficulty to what they can handle and have at it all they want. This is good for everyone involved.

Second big change is one that was not announced prior to beta. There are some major changes in the requirements for various badges. As in, you will be able to get the epic level badges without overnight farming of damage, healing, etc. A lot of the defeat and gladiator badge numbers were also lowered, making those much easier to get.

Some badgers are not happy about this, saying “I got Empath when it was hard! Everyone should have to!” Well, you didn’t get it by playing the game. You got it by setting up a heal farm then walking away from your computer for 8 or 10 hours. I have no problem with someone doing that if they want the badge, but they really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to the requirements being lowered. It sounds too much like “I got mine! Screw everyone else!”

I already have the Exalted badge (What can I say, I’m a tank, I don’t run when it hits the fan. I stand there so the squishies can run. And ship raids really help for this badge.) but the fact that a lot of others will be able to get it more easily doesn’t bother me. I do admit, it does give me a leg up on reaching Immortal (Wish they would fix it so the Accolade hp counted.) and Jailed (You know how hard it is for an Inv tank to get mezzed without farming? And I will be lucky if I get the Imprisoned badge.) As for Empath? Still a tank. Healing is not my forte.

They are also looking at easing some of the Super Group badge requirements, but I am not certain those will make it to live with the rest of I16. I have not seen anything on the forums about them and my Test SG does not have any.

Not so good stuff

There have also been some changes that are not for the better. Most of these have to do with the Mission Architect system and experience earned. The Devs are really serious about stopping people from exploiting things in the MA and making it a place for people to tell stories. I certainly applaud this, being one of the people that like telling stories there. But while some of the changes make sense, others are not as well thought out.

The change that makes sense deals with custom groups. In order to get xp for mobs in a custom group, the group has to have at least one mob at each level of power, minion, Lt., and Boss. This prevents people from creating boss only groups and farming them. This may cause some problems for MA authors, but overall it is a decent change.

Another change was making the Freakshow villains worth less experience. A lot less. They went from being worth 1.2 times normal xp to being worth .8 normal xp. This raised a huge stir on the forums, for good reason. While the Freaks are not hard enough to merit being worth 20% more than normal mobs, they are also not easy enough that they should be cut down to less xp then normal mobs, especially in the 20s when players first start encountering them. They can be a challenge at that point.

This was obviously done because farmers would create farms with Freaks and mow them down using powers the Freaks are weak against. This can happen with almost any mob, but the Freaks being worth more xp made them a favorite for it. Thus the xp nerf.

Fortunately, the Devs heard the outcry and determined that yes, they had overreacted a tad. They changed it so that early Freaks give .95 normal xp, with the high level ones still at .8 normal. This is a much better solution, and has quieted things down a lot.

The changes for custom critters in the MA have also been eased a bit. The original set up for using the Custom setting for selecting powers was just horrible. This was pointed out repeatedly, and was also open to exploitation (oops!), and was changed so that as long as the Standard powers are used, the mobs will be worth Standard xp.

But that brings up the biggest problem with the current build. Standard/standard settings for powers in the MA will only give 75% of the normal xp for non-custom mobs. This is despite the fact that even on Standard settings, custom mobs are much more difficult than regular mobs. Creating custom critters that do not overwhelm players is one of the hardest things to do in the MA, especially for low level arcs. If anything, Standard mobs should be at 100%, with Hard mobs at 110% and Extreme someplace higher.

The Devs have said they will keep working at getting the settings right, but they need to set something now or delay I16 another month to get it right. Since that would push back Going Rogue, we will have to take what we have and try to make the best of it. And at least they got rid of the really bad system.

Final Words

Looking at this, I see I missed several other changes that are coming in I16, like the new exemplar/sidekick system, removal of most hazard zone limits, and some real improvements and fixes in the MA system. But I am already about twice as long as I like on these posts, so they will have to wait.

Overall, this is a really great update coming from the Devs at City of Heroes. They have put a lot of work into it and it really shows. When compared with the really good stuff coming in it, the problems I listed are really not that important. Because when I think about all the stuff I have tried and liked, and think about the stuff I haven’t tried yet, my reaction is  still “Oooo, shiny!”

So I finally got over to my friend’s house again, to get some game time in. It had been far too long since I had made it there, due to conflicting schedules, a bad headache, and some stupidity on my part. But we all made it last night.

We started with a quick 3 person game of Ark of the Covenant, a variant of Carcassonne, which was so much fun the outcome was is blocked from my memory. Or it could be my brain damage acting up again. Whatever.

When our fourth got back from his Good Samaritan work, we turned to a game of Lunar Rails. Another of the many variants of Empire Builder, this one has some interesting changes. Like being able to build completely around the moon, going off of one side and coming back on the other. That is one of the most important aspects of the game, but is also one of the hardest go keep in mind when planning runs.

If you are interested in seeing where the various cities are place on the map, here are a couple of pictures: Near Side Far Side I would not usually worry about this, but is really hard to find good maps of Luna on Google for some reason. They make the cities really hard to see.

I went first, and was planning on running a small payoff of fish from Farside to near Mare Nectaris, then pick up the Circus there (We actually use a variant of the Circus rule. Yes, a variant of a variant. Fun times.) for a double Circus run back to Verne and Mare Ingenii. I wanted to turn over the low paying fish delivery, which I might not be able to do easily if I started with the double Circus run and got good cards heading off some other direction. What I didn’t plan on (Which was stupid of me I know, but again I blame my brain damage.) was Linda going second and starting in Mare Nectaris with a Circus run to the Northwest Near Side.

Needless to say, I had to make a few changes. So I went for a solo Wheat run to Mach, then headed up to Mare Moscoviense for a quick delivery and to pick up Workers. The delivery gave me a Solar Collectors run to Mare Crisium, so it was a build to Kulik for me. Then a build to Hertesprung, where I had finally realized I could pick up the other Circus and deliver it to Mare Ingenii. (This is also where I realized I could have started the game with that Circus for the double run, then went right on to the Fish delivery. Brain damage I tell you. And 3 hours of sleep Thursday night, that didn’t help.)

While I was screwing up my beginning game on the Far Side, Linda was turning over some quick cards on the Near Side, in the small towns between Mare Nectaris and Sinus Iridum. She didn’t get any big payoffs, the Circus to Sinus Iridum being the biggest, but she was cycling cards quickly and had a decent network there. Dan and Dave both started on the Far Side, in Apollo. Fortunately, one needed Aluminum and the other Solar Collectors, otherwise it might have gotten nasty.

They then both headed for Near Side, by different routes. Dan went west, through Mare Ingenii to Balmer and Tranquility Base before taking the remaining cheap routes in the NW that Linda hadn’t grabbed. Dave went north through Hertesprung, to Lorentz, then east to Near Side near Sinus Roris, where he was planning on building through the plains to Hayn, then down to Gauss.

This is where everybody hit a bit of a snag. Dan delivered to Sinus Iridum, and drew a calamity. Linda had drawn the Lava Flow card that prevented movement and drawing in clear spaces, which had stopped Dave’s building in the north of Near Side for a turn and encouraged me to draw to Mare Moscoviense, which didn’t really hurt him, and actually helped me in the long run.

But this time, Dan drew the Moon Quake card that prevented movement or rail building over Alpine, crater walls, and rills and valleys.  Linda lost a few movement, having mostly clear track, Dave was the same, getting caught by a crater wall, I was sitting right outside the crater around Hertesprung, so lost all of my movement, but Dan was really hurt.

His next delivery, was in Pythagoras, only 6 moves away. But he did not have the money to build into the city until he made his delivery in Sinus Iridum. And now he could not draw in because of the crater wall there. He would lose the rest of that turn (No change there, he would have to lose it anyway because he couldn’t draw until movement was over.), the entire next turn (The card doesn’t go away until the end of his turn so no drawing.), then the entire next turn again (Not being able to draw until after movement was over.) This was a really big time sink, so he decided to re-do his entire plan and head east again.

This was the turning point of the game really. I had the Solar Collector run and was thinking about doing a Diamond run to Sinus Roris, since I was going to need to get that way sometime. My initial build had ended just south of the crater wall at Tsiolkovskiy, so I was going to be near that anyway, and it would get me closer to the Golden Spike award. (What can I say? We likes our variant rules.) Then I got to Mare Ingenii. And drew Diamonds to Tranquility Base. Hmm, 33 million at Mare Crisium, 25 million at Tranquility, then 38 million at Sinus Roris. Picking up 2 more major cities and placing me just outside of Mare Nectaris. Yeah, that sounds very good, even moving at 10.

So I chugged to Tranquility Base, after the delivery to Mare Crisium and turned over the Energy Shortage card. Chemicals to any major city for 20 million? And I was 8 outside of Sinus Iridum, 2 out of Archimedes, and needed to build anyway to reach Sinus Roris. All the others could make the delivery. But they would all need to use their next turn to get the product, then deliver on the next. I drew 10 to get to Sinus Iridum and Archimedes, and spent 10 to upgrade to a 12 speed train.

I delivered the Chemicals and finished building into Sinus Roris, and extended my track through Russell and around to the Far side. Next turn I delivered the Diamonds to Sinus Roris and picked up some KREEP to take east for a delivery and finished connecting to Hertesprung for the Golden Spike bonus. In four turns, I made 136 million.

The game was not over at this point, I had spent a big chunk of that money building rail, but I was far in the lead, and the others never got close after that. When Dan drew the tax card, I had 205 million, Linda was just ahead of Dan with 75 million, and Dave was in last with 55 million. Even the 2 meteor showers Dan drew, one after the other, both of which hit my track, didn’t slow me down. I had just went over the destroyed track moving away from the areas hit.

The Decompression and Wildcat Strike I drew on myself did slow me down for a couple of turns, but not enough to matter. Dan was the king of Calamities for the night though. After the Moon Quake card early, he drew both Solar Flares cards, the southern hemisphere Cosmic Ray card, the earlier mentions Meteor Showers, and for his final draw of the game, Airlock Operator Strike. Every one of which, hit him.

The Airlock Operator Strike was especially irritating because of the circumstances. He also drew the Food Shortage card, which pays 20 million for the first person that delivers food to a major city. I was sitting in Mare Crisium with fish on my train, and the 20 million would give me 254 million for the game on my next turn. Dan was in Hertesprung, 2 away from Wine in Michelson, which would keep me from getting the 20 million and help him out big time. But he couldn’t pick up the Wine, because of the Airlock Operator Strike.

So I won the game with 254 million, Linda was second with 165 million, Dan was third with 163 million, and Dave was last with 105 million. I have to say, this was an example of luck making the game a run away. After my initial bad decisions for my start, I had good runs and ran them well. But the 60 million from the various bonuses I got, just because I was in just the right place for them, put me way ahead of the others. The last one for instance. I had the winning run on my train and would have delivered in 3 turns. But all the other players also would have made deliveries in that same time, with at least Dan making it over 200 million.

Most times, the luck is spread out more. But this time, Dan got stomped on, and still did well despite that, and I had it good putting, me way out in front. But Lady Luck is fickle, so it will even out in the future.

I have mentioned before that I play the MMO City of Heroes. I have been playing it since the first day it was offered for sale, and the only reason I signed up that late was I had somehow completely missed its existence until about 2 weeks before that. But I have been there ever since. And on occasion, I have been picked to participate in the closed beta testing of new issues (The name of the free updates that NCSoft puts out). This occurred a couple of weeks ago for the next issue, number 14: Architect.

I was quite surprised to receive the email. I had been sick for a while and not playing much at all on the live servers. And I had totally missed the fact that the Closed Beta was even going on. I am obviously not always the most observant person about some things.

I was not one of the people that has been eagerly anticipating the Mission Architect, I had some vague ideas about stories I might make, but I have not been planning anything special. But that did not stop me from logging on to the Test server and checking out it out.

It was much more and less then I was expecting. Almost complete control over the text and dialogue of the missions you create, the ability to use the character creator and player powers to make custom creatures to place in your missions, and the ability to create almost every kind of mission available in the game were all pretty much as I expected. But much more fun than I had imagined.

I found myself immersed in creating a storyline, finding the right maps, adjusting powers for the custom creatures I made, getting the text and dialogue right. Hours slipped by very, very quickly. And it was a lot of fun while I was doing it. Except for when my custom characters kicked my butt.

Issue 14 has now entered open beta testing, which means that a lot more people are now on the Test server, trying out the changes in PvP combat, additions to the Arena, and the Mission Architect. The first two things do not really interest me that much, I occasionally do some PvP, but not enough to have an opinion on those changes. But the Mission Architect is a huge change to the game. And I find myself looking forward to it hitting the Live servers, to see what comes out of it.

If you left City of Heroes because it was boring, or there was not any new content, here is your chance to create what you want to see. Or just look through what others have created and see how you like it. But a word of warning, the custom characters that the players come up with? They are much, much tougher than the normal mobs in the game. And that is on the lowest power setting.

Are you tough enough to take them on?

Went to visit friends last night, like I try to do most Fridays. We generally play games and visit, and eat cheese. The cheese is important. We have only been doing it a couple of decades now, so we already know what everybody thinks about most things, but we say it anyway.

Last night was not a good night at the table for me. While waiting for others to show up, three of us played a game of The Ark of the Covenant, a variant of Carcassonne. It was made a bit more interesting because we were playing on an end table, the large table being used by the children for a game of Killer Bunnies.

The much smaller space made it much easier to decide to close off the castle holding bubba. (The prophet piece. I had to look that up, we never call it that. Big meeples are bubbas, in all the games.) The turn before I played a piece to share sheep with another player, who had more than me, the third player put down a piece to block it. At the endof the game, the third player ended up winning, with me second, and the other player last. If I had managed to share the sheep, I would have won the game.

When everybody showed up, we started a game of 6 player Empire Builder. This is very rare for us, we usually only manage to get 3 or 4 people at a time there, because 2 of us live over an hour away, and the others mostly have lives. We really wanted to make it a game of Iron Dragon or Lunar Rails, but one person had only played once before, and we were getting a late start because of the Killer Bunnies game.

I went first, and because of the 6 players, I decided not to try the sugar run to Chicago I had. I figured it would be too expensive to get through the Rockies since others would grab cheap routes. So I took a shorter double run of Lead to a couple of places in Mexico. Then I watched everybody else build East of Kansas City. The entire eastern half of the US was packed.

That is an example of how the decisions I made worked for the rest of the game. I am not bad at these games, I won the Empire Builder International championship at the Puffing Billy tournament at Origins this last year. But lately I am getting my butt kicked at our weekend games. Good thing I am the only one from them that makes it to conventions.

But it was a fun night, even though I was just over $100 million when the game ended. And the 5th place person had almost $200 million. It wasn’t even close.

I finally got my monthly shipment of comics from Mile High Comics. I do not particularly like getting all my comics once a month, rather than every week or so, but the local shop closed several years ago and at the time I did not make the drive to other towns to find a shop there. In the years since, I have found a couple of shops in nearby towns but Mile High is doing well enough to keep my business.

My reading list has changed over the years, mostly super-heroes, although I do pick up the occasional non-super title. And I read from a variety of companies, the exact mix depending on what I feel like reading that is being published. These days it is mostly DC Comics, with some odds and ends from other publishers. I am not reading anything from Marvel on my monthly list these days. Not because I hate Marvel, but simply because of economics. I have been liking the DC books more since Infinite Crisis and One Year Later.

I do pick up trades of the Ultimate Marvel books, and the current Captain America run. Ed Brubacker is doing a great job on that title. And I will be checking out the trades for Captain Britain and MI13 and for the current run of Thor. I have been hearing really good things about them and am looking forward to reading the stories.

Other non-DC books I am reading include Angel: After The Fall and Buffy: Season Eight. I was a fan of both shows when they were on and have mostly been enjoying the continuing stories in the comics. I also follow PS238 by Aaron Williams. I had heard about it on a message board and picked up the first trade at Origins a couple of years ago. After I read part of it, I picked up the other trades that were out before the end of the convention. Then added it to my pull list when I got home.

I picked up The Boys after reading about it on Newsrama and because I have liked [W: Garth Ennis] in other works. It is a super-hero comic, but not like most of them. I am afraid it is a more accurate protrayal of what the world would be like if super-heroes were possible than most attempts. It is certainly filled with more bloody violence and sex than most.

Enough for now. I will talk about the DC stuff and some specifics in later posts. Not that they will be particulary timely posts, since I don’t get my issues until long after the show at local stores. But that is the beauty of personal blogs. They don’t have to be timely.

I play the MMO City of Heroes. Started the first day it was released and have been on it ever since. I don’t always play a lot, but I do like jumping on and beating up villains from time to time. Or beating up heroes, if I feel like being a villain at the moment. (Mayhem missions are much more fun than Safeguard missions.)So they recently released a game client for the Mac. This does not really affect me, since I am on a Windows machine. But they have done a couple of ads to use in pushing the new client to a new audience. This one was just released and I had to share.

An obvious parody of the I’m a Mac/I’m a PC commercials, but in a fun way. The first one is also quite funny.

And if you are not a player, you should check it out. Easy game and very friendly to casual players. The forums are even friendly to visit.

It was a pretty good weekend, except for the parts that weren’t. I guess that technically fits all weekends, but at least most of this one was good. Well okay, most of it wasn’t really good. It just wasn’t bad.

Went over to see friends in Indiana Friday night. This is a pretty regular thing, we try to get together every Friday, although we do sometimes have scheduling problems, like holidays, vacations, or illness. We have been doing this for years. Actually, we have been doing it for a couple of decades at this point. We started after college graduation and have kept it up ever since. Even when I moved to Virginia for five years, the others continued getting together. We originally got together on Saturday nights, but moved it to Friday nights earlier this year because it worked better for work schedules.

Why do we go this, for over 20 years now? Well, for one, we like each other. We don’t agree about a lot of things, like politics or religion, but we still like spending time together. We show up, usually at Linda’s house, and spend several hours talking and playing games.

Guess I forgot to mention the games. That is how we started hanging out during college. Sort of. Most of us met and became friends and started playing games there. We had heard about some sort of game dealing with wizards and dragons and wanted to try it. So we found some Basic Edition Dungeons & Dragons and basically taught ourselves how to play. Our DM at the time was not the best, but we still enjoyed the games.

From there, we expanded to board games, especially Risk. We also played other thing, like Rook, Shogun, and Civilization. We were pretty open to playing about anything, as long as we enjoyed it.

Getting older did slow us down a bit. Jobs made it harder to find the time, I lived an hour away from the rest of the group, then I moved to Virginia. But the others kept getting together and playing games. We went to Gencons (before it was in Indy), Origins (I still get to this one as much as possible), and a local game con. One of us died very suddenly on a Saturday morning, a few hours before we got together, leaving his wife and 3 daughters. And still we get together as much as possible.

These days we mostly play train games. We started with Rail Baron, then moved on to the Empire Builder games. We own all the versions and like playing them, but the India version is pretty much our favorite. Well, I am not liking it all that well after the last 2 weekends. My game both weekends was poor to say the least. But that is how it goes sometimes, you just don’t get the cards you need when you need them.

We also played a couple of games of Ticket to Ride using the USA 1910 cards. We like that version because of the large number tickets available, making each game so different. We also play the Switzerland version on occasion. It can get pretty cutthroat, but is still fun. I did manage to win one game of Ticket to Ride, but again failed miserably at the second.

So it was mainly a losing effort Friday night. An hour drive, got my butt kicked at multiple games, then an hour home. Lots of fun. Wish we could get together this week, but the holiday schedule makes it impossible.

Saturday was more fun. I drove to Kentucky and participated in an orienteering event put on by the Orienteering Cincinnati group. It was marginally closer than the event the IndyO people were running. Considering how badly I did, the less time I had to drive to get home, the better.

I do not expect to do extremely well at the events. I left myself get too out of shape over the last year for that. I go to get out of my house, get some exercise, and basically have a fun walk through the woods. But that doesn’t mean I want to do badly on the course. And this time I did. I was doing the orange course and read the map wrong at the first control. (A minor mistake, after all, how important is reading the map at an orienteering event.) So I found the second control first, realized what I had done, and had to go back to the first control, then back to the second. Given my slow speed, this was a real problem.

So I walked through the woods, occasionally frustrated, usually sweating, and trying to find the shortest way between two points. Since I like the straight line definition, I did some of the sections the hard way. It was mostly fun, except for the cramps I had most of the time in my quadriceps. I didn’t warm up enough before starting, and it was a chilly day. They were painful, and driving for over 2 hours getting home didn’t help. Which was why Sunday was not a fun day at all.

Which pretty much leads me back to my first paragraph. It was a good weekend. Except for the times it wasn’t.