Drunken Comics Rage

Elsewhere on this fine Internet thing I recently shared some casual City of Heroes/Villains related thoughts with the rest of the gang here at DCR.  With sooperheroes being so commonly associated with comics, I was encouraged (by the repeated application of blunt instruments) to post said thoughts here.  So here goes.

As DVO and I have both mentioned in a post or two, we play the City of Heroes/Villains (referred to from now on as CoX) MMOG.  I’ve been playing it for somewhere close to four years now (with a gap or two), which is shocking to me in hindsight.  In any case, I’ve been playing it (and CoV in particular) quite a lot the last few months, and those of us here at DCR still actively playing the game gather most Saturday mornings to fight (or commit) crime for a few hours.

The most recent major update to the game, Issue 12, went live a short while ago.  Many quality of life features were added (and are much appreciated), as well as new content, new power pools to choose from, and more.  All in all, it has been a great update, and the volume of additions and changes makes me already eager to see what’s on tap for Issue 13.

I sat down the other day and put some thought into a few CoX things both related and unrelated to Issue 12.  As mentioned previously, I was ‘encouraged’ to share, so here goes.

First off, a gripe.  My highest level character is a villain Mastermind named Emperor Grimm who is a vague homage to Doctor Doom.  (DOOOM!)  Mastermind characters summon, control, upgrade, etc minions and underlings in lieu of having lots of powers like super strength, invulnerability, blasting fire from their hands, etc.  Minion options include ninja, mercenaries, undead, street thugs, and Grimm’s choice, robots.  Masterminds seem to be a very, very soloable archetype; the vast majority of CoX archetypes are genuinely soloable, but Masterminds make it easy.  And, frankly, they are FUN.  As Grimm has advanced I’ve gotten more and different types of robots, and also been able to upgrade them.  Now at 44 (of the 50 possible levels) when I unleash the Grimmbots all holy hell breaks loose.  Its great fun.

So what’s my gripe?  Well, on the villain side of things, once you hit the 40s you are able to select a patron from amongst the big big bad guy’s right hand villains.  You do a couple of story arcs for your potential patron, and assuming you succeed you’ll open up a new power pool, unique to that patron, from which to choose powers.  And pick wisely, as you can’t undo it or change it, even with a respec.  So, after much consideration (because gawd knows I overthink these things as a rule), I chose Scirocco (sp?), a magic evil guy who leads the wicked looking but generally annoying legions of scary mummy looking floating Mu men.  Why this guy?  Well, a mix of him fitting my ‘vision’ of Grimm and a practical consideration of the power choices fitting my style of play and fun.

So seriously, what’s my gripe?  The patron powers stink.  And, I’ve heard, this is a common gripe with the patron power pools in CoV.  Like all of the power pools that aren’t primary or secondary to your archetype there are four powers in the pool.  Immediately upon choosing the pool you can pick one of the first two; once you’ve chosen one, you can pick the third, and once you’ve chosen two, you can pick the fourth.  First I picked a small Mu-electric-y blastie that did minor damage but supposedly would suck down bad guy (good guy?) energy. I loaded it up with three enhancements to increase the energy debuff…and WHEN it hits, which seems rare, it barely twitches the bad guy’s stamina bar. So I respec'd it out and got the second power, which is a shield.  It is hard to tell if its working well or not, but at least I see numbers telling me I have greater damage resistance, and it gives me cool red-electric-y arcs running up and down ol’ Grimm occasionally when it’s on.  Recently, after leveling to 44, I chose the third power, which is an AoE hold that also (supposedly) drains energy. And again, it seems to rarely hit; when it does it works well enough I suppose, but oddly sometimes it seems to miss, but if I hit the guy with a web grenade I see the graphic for both the web and the Mu-electric-y hold. Weird. And I’m now unenthused about the whole gawddam thing.  So, I'm giving it one more level to get some enhancement slots in that hold to see if I can make it much more accurate…if not, then I'm ditching that pool entirely and getting other stuff.  “Other stuff” perhaps not being terribly cool either, but at least more useful…a repair for the 'bots and maybe a third leadership clickie that will presumably make my bots even MORE powerful!  MWUUAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAA!!

*ahem*

A last note on Grimm: as he’s gotten up into the 40s and into what I believe is the last villain zone, Grandville, he’s increasingly being run at the signature heroes from the CoH side.  That’s all been very cool…the storylines in CoV as a whole are well done and well written, and I’ve enjoyed seeing the endgame so far.  After having taken down quite a few of the signature heroes…I started getting cocky.

Then I ran into Positron.

Positron is a major signature hero in the game, and he kicked my ass up and down no less than five times (and that's saying something, because Grimm hasn't died much at all) before I had to finally drop the difficulty all the way down to just one above the 'starter' level. I had been set to one level from the top, and had ran missions at the setting for…gosh…15 levels? Things got a little dicey as I started running up against the named heroes, but…damn, at least I was taking them down. Positron was ridiculous.  He was near impossible to lock down with holds/slows, like caltrops.  Like all the elite bosses (and I get this) he’s a huge hit point sink, so he takes a lot of beating.  But…I'm seeing a little pattern here…I dunno if he's strictly a blaster or not, but the more-blaster-y type elite bosses, particularly flyers, are WAY harder to deal with than the more-melee-ish type elite bosses. For example Valkyrie, another signature hero that is largely melee, went down pretty easy in the mission right afterward. I get that they are elite bosses at that point, and I don't want 'em being bitches, but…geez.  I don’t know that even a minor rebalancing is needed, and hell, the experience might be completely different with a different archetype, or even with a teammate or two to help things along.  But…I saw the same thing while doing the Scirroco patron arc, where one of his underlings (blastie-flyer-ice-stuff) whooped my ass a time or three, but I put ol’ ground-bound Scirroco himself down without too much trouble.  Something here smells a little bit, although it ain’t that big a deal.  Moving on…

Issue 12 introduced the Midnighter Club, an ancient group of academics who use learning and knowledge to help guide the course of humanity.  You know the deal.  The Midnighter Club is accessible to both heroes and villains, and if you are level 35 or higher also provides access to a new zone, Cimerora, which I’ll get to in a moment.  We ran some of our heroes (including my newest, Scion, who I’ll also get to in a minute) through the hero side of things and got them access to the Midnighter Club.  The storyline leading to getting your hero in the club was quite good, involving the Rikti and the Lost and culminating in what frankly is a pretty major development in the world of CoX.  Of course, as with all these games, Really Big Things That Change The World never actually change the world…but still, it was fun and felt at least a little like it was broad in scope and important.  Plus, it got me into the clubhouse with the rest of the cool Midnighter kids.

I also ran Grimm (DOOOM!!) solo through the villain side of the Midnighter Club story. It was good, though it was more like two shorter stories than one long one on the CoH side.  After completing the missions, Grimm got in the club and wandered around. It was kinda fun trying to find all the clickable items in the club to get the Midnighter Club Archivist badge, and the little bit o' background that comes with each item was a good read.

With Grimm being one of my two (I have a very dusty hero at 40) 35+ level guys, I decided to run him through the new area, Cimerora (sp?).  This is a REALLY nice looking area, in my opinion, at least within the context of CoX.  It’s Roman themed, and they did a good job with it.  Think of a dusty, mountainous island that holds a Roman port and fort nestled in it, and you’ll have the idea.  Very pretty in that CoX way…lots of people walking around, lots of nooks and crannies and doorways and alleys, most of which don’t really have much meaning because of the nature of mission vending machine NPCs and instanced mission entries.  You so rarely have to LOOK for anything in CoX, and it’s a double edged sword: it’s so easy to hop in and just play and have fun, but at the same time you have to somewhat generate your own fun and interest in exploring what is strictly speaking ‘meaningless’ content.

But…back to Cimerora.  Without giving away too much, I was expecting a bit more; it largely seems to be just a launching point for the task force.  There is a short arc or two of stories that primarily seem to be just to give you some background on the zone and let you fight the new Roman-styled bad guys…all of which seems like prep for the taskforce.

But that said…I've read that the task force, which has four missions and apparently takes about two hours, is GREAT. Like, play it a few times great. So I'm all for doing that. Successfully completing the task force is how you unlock the Roman costume pieces…and that right there is pretty disappointing to me. What about characters that I want to be Roman themed from day one?  The two guys I have that can make it to Cimerora are 40 and 44; am I suddenly, after all this time, changing them into Roman gladiator gear?  I don’t think so.  And taking a guy all the way to 35 JUST to get him Roman armor gear seems a ridiculous endeavor.  So, I’m casually hoping they eventually release the Roman gear to everybody, or perhaps (even better) unlock the gear for every character on your account once one of your characters has completed that task force.  The latter option at least keeps the gear feeling ‘special’.

So I mentioned Scion.  With Issue 12 came new power pools as well as some existing power pools being offered to a broader range of archetypes.  Although I’m pretty bitter about not being able to put together a scrapper (hero) or stalker (villain) with blades as a primary power and electric as a secondary power (think of a dude with two swords and little electrical arcs whipping around him…neat), I was pretty excited about making an earth controller with a thermal radiation secondary powerset.  Basically, that combo lets you whip up stone cages and quicksand AoEs and earthquakes and shit while using the thermal radiation to do some healing, give your fellows damage protection shields, and more.

So far, through about 16 levels, Scion has been a fun character. He *feels* powerful despite essentially doing little or no damage directly to the bad guys.  We wade into a big fight, Scion locks up the bad guys with his earth control powers, and then heals the blasters and scrappers and tankers as needed.  I'm looking forward to advancing in both the earth control and the thermal power pools. His heals aren't very 'big' but they recycle pretty damn fast. So far, none of his powers have seemed slow to recharge or too heavy of an energy drain…so all my enhancement slots have gone to maxing out (three slots) the power itself (healing, immobilize, whatever).  I feel VERY involved in every scrap despite not punching or blasting the bad guys myself, and the fast-but-light heals keep me on my toes and very engaged.  Although I enjoy my ice/storm controller, Ymirr, I think Scion has been more fun because of the need to be more engaged.

And…that’s about it.  I hope to rally the troops for a run at that Task Force in Cimerora here soon, though there frankly aren’t six of us who play regularly, so that’s gonna necessitate (*shudder*) a pick up group (PUG).  Gah.

Filed under: Games!, Monkey Rage