CoH: Hanging up the tights?

Can't believe it's been a month already, so much for MMO-playing goals. Had a busy month and didn't get to play CoH as much as I set out in the beginning, so much for getting a few characters to level 20. In the end got three characters to level 10-12, and that was only taking advantage of a big play session yesterday with double XP. Did get a little deeper understanding than my first impressions, but only just and kinda undecided if I'll be making a return trip,

One of the biggest problems I had initially was character builds, but since then it's only gotten better. I made a dominator with Earth/Fire powersets, going on recommendations on the archetype forum and had a lot of fun with that, the combination of control primary and damage secondary was a nice playstyle and those two powersets were fun. The brute I'd made without much imput was actually fun as well, though it's hard to go wrong with a high hp berserker. The defender I'd made first was actually starting to be fun when I got him a few more powers, though was having really bad endurance issues. I was just thinking of improving that by boosting stamina and reducing endurance costs of the toggle skills, by making some crafted level 15 enhancements and slotting at least two endurance reduction per toggle power. Didn't get time to test that out, but the fact that enhancements can improve a build like so is a nice feature.

Other than that, I really like the new 'Going Rogue' content and the choice between factions. Though a few of the storylines were a little hard to follow especially returning midway through an arc and trying to remember who Paulo was and why you had to 'kidnap' his father. I did read all the text and dialogue, but still ended up stumped in places, things just not making sense and some occurances were just unexpected, 'but didn't he just say...'. Most of the time it was fine, guess other games don't bother with complex scenarios and like to spell things out, so spoiled in a way. Anyways it was enough to keep me engaged even if it was just trying hard to remember who everyone and the organisations were, and if they were good or bad, or undercover or other.

A few things I didn't realise at first was how you can go undercover and do the opposing factions missions, seems it is as easy as just finding the contacts and accepting their missions, which is easier to do when you've played both sides and been shown where the contacts are located. The other thing that is really nice is that the storyline missions scale to your level when you accept them, I'm not sure how extensive this is but it is giving more options, without danger of outleveling content and being able to experience it all on one character.

So am I going back, not at the moment I think, even though I left plenty undone and mid-action, might give Champions Online a spin first, but done something completely different. On the whole I enjoyed the month playing at superheroes, even though I'm not subscribing for another month I'll be returning some other time to finish the 'Going Rogue' areas. Just in case I took pictures of my heroes, the Earth/Fire dominator is below, which I think is a really cool appropiately themed costume, though maybe a little unoriginal.

CoH: First Impressions

Having recently picked up a complete edition of City of Heroes: Going Rogue in a Steam sale, spent the last week getting to grips with it. It has not being an easy game to begin, but that's probably why I've stuck with it.

First off, character creation is vast and overwhelming and spent a good portion of playtime at the creation screens. A lot more time was spent outside of game on the forums trying to get a feel for what archetypes would be a good fit for me, and how to build them without ending up with a gimp character. The freedom is welcome but with very little in-game guidance it felt a bit daunting. I suppose the counter argument would be just going with the flow and experiencing the game with one character to make better informed choices with a subsequent character. Surprisingly I think Cryptic has the best solution for this when Champions Online goes free to play, to give non-subscribers a pre-set character that would be decent (I hope) for a particularly role and allow subscribers the full gamut of character creation. It's effectively a step by step tutorial on how to build a character for new players just trying out the game, then when they have the experience to fully understand the value of a more free-form character creation then they can subscribe.

For now my solution is to roll a selection of characters to level 20 and see how I feel about them then, it also fits in with my goal of experiencing the hero/villain/praetorian areas. Have picked a brute, defender, dominator and blaster, might add in scrapper and corrupter later if I have time or subscribe for another month, we'll see. But worryingly I already built a defender that was surprisingly squishy, will have to get a few more defensive powers on him to offset that, then again maybe a corrupter who has an inverse role (more damage than buffing) to defender might be a better fit.

I think the biggest difficulty initially was with questing, quest givers? Started in the villain area, worked through first contact (quest-giver), he introduced me to the next contact, when I was done with him I was at a bit of a loss. Maybe I missed something but it took a while to find the area to go next, found another slightly higher area first via the flying transports but what I needed to have done was to get on a boat to the next island. Then when I got there it was a while before I figured out the connection between the broker and the newspaper, I should pay more attention. The hero area I got dropped in after the tutorial had even less pointers, I had to work out the symbol for a contact to know where to go. On the other hand the newer praetorian area is much improved.

Despite these initial hiccups, I think I'm warming to this style of questing, where some contacts need to be found or you need to complete achievements before they will talk to you, oh and the mobile phone to call contacts and hand in quests is a nice idea.

The thing I've most liked about what I've played so far is the new area and the choices that must be made, either to favour the Resistance of the Loyalist faction, it is very nicely done and is definitely tempting to see both sides of the story. Already there has been a very tough decision, whether to take part in a summary execution or to stop it, took a moment of thought to go through with it and remain on the Loyalist side. And seeing as GW2 comes from the same stable I'm expecting similar moral choices, hopefully as good as this one, and better than the hospital versus orphanage choice that seems a bit simple in comparison.

Buying Virtues and Stat Tomes in Lotro

This whole issue has been annoying me for a while, so I'm going to have a rant about it but in a fair and considered way I hope. I don't mind paying for content, but the virtue system is more a barrier to play than meaningful character progression, and here's the kicker a free/premium without benefits is effectively paying twice for such a useless system. First they pay to open the trait slots and then they have to buy the content to earn those traits, double-dipping into the players pocket so to speak. All well and good from a business perspective, but it does take away choice from players if they want to for example tank at high level and the trait Innocence is essential, and most other melee characters would do well to have this one too. To get full ranks of Innocence then a player must do 75 quests in the Shire and buy the Trollshaws and Misty Mountains questpacks to ever have a chance of reaching rank 10. Acceptable for one character but for alts it becomes a chore, I'm starting to see this game as more and more alt-unfriendly for example every alt requires to be kindred with iron garrison guards and complete vol2 books 1-6 too, still no easy feats nowadays.

Despite these misgivings especially now the Store is in effect, I still like the idea of virtues just not the way they are implemented currently. When Turbine released skirmishes and allowed deeds to be completed during them, that was a step in the right direction, the player is doing relevant, rewarding and challenging content and choosing to so over going out in the landscape to kill grey difficulty mobs. I'm a fan of skirmishes and as a premium player own all of them but not all the quest packs, so you can tell which I favour. With content split up now, the design should change to provide multiple ways to earn the same virtues.

I'm all for simplifying the virtues too so that each one just affects a single stat or resistance, so Innocence would be melee defence, Empathy would be armour rating, Loyalty would be vitality etc. At present a tank would take all 3 melee defence virtues and 2 of the armour ratings and maybe some variability depending on encounters. To simplify virtues to affect just one stat, only 2 slots are filled by tanking virtues and then the rest are up to the player to choose depending on the mobs or boss the player is going to be facing, whether wound, poison, tactical, ranged, shadow...

Looking at these now simplified virtues there is 5 that affect the primary stats: Discipline, Determination, Loyalty, Idealism and Wisdom. Each of these increase the particular stat for 30 points, but including the now defunct lesser bonuses on other virtues, it's 50 points more or less for rank 10. That's the same as the adding all 5 stat tomes of one type to your character. But the distinction here is crucial, I see the stat tomes as a no-brainer, you buy them and add them to your character forever more, whereas if the proposed virtue system was implemented there is greater restrictions, it's unlikely that all of them will be slotted and maybe only one or two to shore up weaknesses or as a stopgap until primary stats are maxed. If being able to make those decisions when maximising your character is at the heart of many MMORPGs gear progression, then the stat tomes are nothing more than a money-grab without adding anything to play around with.

Settling in

Ok so the Lonelands quest pack is going to be free with next update, which I found out just after I bought it for 50 points. I won't rail against the bad timing, because for most people paying 50 points now is better than waiting about a fortnight. Although, I don't see the point of giving it away for free, except to assume it is a calculated gambit to get more people invested in their characters and the game, levelling to 20 is too quick and trivial, conversely having to pay (getting in the habit) 50 points sooner is more honest I feel. I absolve Codemasters of any blame, they were only playing catch-up on this price-point which US players had available for much longer, and I'd assume they don't have a 'pricing' department involved in the monitoring of prices and player uptake of items in the store.

In other news Codemasters just gave (all?) former subscribers a free month of VIP because they couldn't find another solution to errors in allotting the appropriate benefits. This probably explains the 2 days extra after launch I'd gotten previously, well if it was intentional, and then when I finally was bumped down to premium I got all the right bonuses, unlike others who just went straight to premium (free) without any benefits. Putting on my cynics hat, this may point to the next update being 2 maybe 3 weeks away, because the benefit of swift travel will be included and to solve the problems once and for all, they need to give this free time til then.

Ah well, always nice to get something free, just goes to show that the settling in period can have ups and downs, now to just avoid the trap of rolling some more alts.

No, no, no... stop with the free points already.

It has happened not once but twice more, but hopefully that's the last of it because it's inflicting a sense of guilt, no guilt is not the right word it's annoyance if all these extra points are taken back. At this stage, I reckon I'll just have to try not to think 'what I'd really like is another skirmish... oh look another 500 points, damn'.

I did actually buy something from the store with my own points, the Evendim questpack for 149 points, even though my alts will only get a few levels out of it, but the 3 scalable instances should be worth it. Except that amount of points is coincidentally very close to those I got by rolling a dwarf on every server and doing the store introduction quest 14 times. Oh well I plan to buy the Lonelands questpack for 50 TP this week, which I can honestly say hand on heart I earned through deeds since the changeover, but is it really worth it? Don't have plans to level up any new characters but I'm hoping the GA instances will be scalable soon and actually permanently owning more of the game is certainly enticing. Still haven't spent any cash that I feel I should really be spending.

Giving away plenty of stuff and guilting players into paying some money in lieu of the time they've spent in game is a great strategy, it works on me anyways, just not in Lotro F2P yet. I've justified plenty of purchases in the past by that train of thought, and about to do the same with cosmetic changes for characters in Guild Wars in a figurative sense of dusting them off and starting to play them again, but funnily enough can't use that same line to justify buying the wedding costumes or any of the other costumes for that matter.

Lotro: F2P and me

Yeah finally was the first thing to say but now having spent a few days as a VIP then premium, still trying to make up my mind on the change. For a start in a case of perfect prescience my sub ended the day F2P went live, except it didn't. For two days I was wondering why I was still a VIP, until finally the weekly maintenance bumped me back down while others who had been erroneously labelled Free went in the other direction.

And there is still the mystery of why I ended up with 2000 points. I know now that I was entitled to 1000 points because I'd managed to get in 2 birthdays (was it really that long; well only been subscribed for 3 months over that period so wouldn't exactly call myself a veteran), 500 pts maybe from being almost VIP when the change happened and after that I'm at a loss. What did I do with these points that I may or may not be entitled, spend them as quickly as possible before they could be taken back. Bought the Siege of Mirkwood expansion, regret it slightly now that there is the possibility that I was entitled to at least some of those points.

Was SoM a good impulse purchase? Well my warden just hit 60 and just headed there for the first time this weekend. I get fed up with questing especially after the drudgery the dwarfs subjected me to for the last month or so, and I see the extra 6 skirmishes as more desirable than the 'quest pack', and well the epic story is going free, and not a big fan of instances myself, so it should be good value for money just taking the skirmishes. On the other hand my list of things I need now that I'm premium would have been covered easily by those 2000 pts: an extra 5 slots in AH, Thievery and Mischief, Ford of Bruinen skirmishes and that's about it, could play happily without anything else right now. Although, I'd probably not be so happy if I'd not been a previous subscriber, but yeah getting free travel back soon.

And finally, I may have found a solution for altitis, having settled on 3 characters now, I deleted all lowbies less than level 20, and with the thought of rolling a new character and to buy them bags, traits, removal of gold cap, content etc being deterrent enough.

Back to Lotro - not enough vuvuzelas!

So Turbine released a kinda cool ad for F2P, but it was missing something very important, they could have included a coda referencing a certain trailer, which could have gone something like this:

Gandalf stands looking pleased with himself having floored the crowd with the shockwave created by his staff (surely that's lore-breaking, right?), only for an annoying droning sound to start up in the stunned silence he'd just created. He scans the crowd and glowers at the offending article, jabbing his finger at it and causing the instrument to crumple and abruptly stop with a last shrill squeak. *cue titles and the playing of a rather jaunty tune.


That was enough to keep me amused oh for about 5 secs while the bad news of a delay to F2P in Europe was sinking in, (there’s probably a joke about the existing community and unwashed masses there too) which was kinda short-lived when Codemasters did the unthinkable and reactivated 'welcome back week'. Sure they are people still thirsting after the drought of content since earlier this year, but for returning/trial players this is a real boon, it's even freer than F2P changes incoming. It's a generous move and impels them to get it sorted or lose out on all the revenue. Oh and complaints in the US keep piling in.

Got in a good bit of playing this weekend. Had in mind that I should level my captain up fast to get him a mount so I don't have to pay for one, and while I'm at it unlock as many deeds as possible. This lasted two levels before it got boring and deciding it wasn't worth it, and yeah I'll probably more than likely need to buy porting abilities to Rivendell as well so yeah yeah on the list those go. Tried to fathom this conundrum out, there's time I'm happy to spend in game, until it becomes a grind or maybe I tell myself to suck it up until it's over and done with, but then to put a value on how much time I'm willing to sacrifice to grind, on the one hand it's certainly not a few cents and on the other side wanting to remove travel time for a few euros. I've tied myself in knots, but the upshot is that the choice is good but isn't there something a bit evil of spending money to get rid of grind. That's the genius of the system I suppose.

Once I decided that I'd be willing to buy the damn horse and instant travel, went and did something a little more fun. Took my warden past the front entrance hall in Moria and had a blast. This complex 3D maze is so appealing to me at least, like to figure out all the passageways and see every nook and cranny. Had already made brief excursions into it using the Moria keg, that’s how I got in this time funnily enough, ended up in chamber of the crossroads and rode back to the start, well the first time I jumped down the well and had to go back to my house and hope to get sent to the same place twice. It was nice to ride through an unknown map and then work back through it corridor by corridor, and putting the various sights together. Arrived at the palace of náin, and had a feeling I'd been here before, oh right up there in the colonnades (another drunken excursion then). Enjoyed the questing up until I'd almost completed Dolven-view before getting sent back to kill more insects for the epic book, though it was a good time to call it quits. Anyways here's a picture of one section near the start, there's 2 levels visible below, to get to the bottom room just a short trek to the left, to get to the middle section with the ledges a long trek to the right, through a goblin camp, a confusing dark cavern with cave-claws to arrive there, this is my idea of a spatial puzzle and yes I did have to figure it out.