After a good chunk of time in which I didn’t play (and thus didn’t paint) due to time and financial constraints, I’ve restructured my personal calendar to afford additional time at home during the week AND took advantage of a brief but no less pleasant small pile of available personal cash to make some acquisitions and to re-connect with the local 2 or 3 dudes who actually play semi-regularly.
As such, I’ve added to the Orboros pile:
1 base unit of Tharn Ravagers (4), plus the Shaman UA
1 Druid Overseer to hang with my Druids of Orboros
Daliah/Skarath
1 base unit of Blood Trackers plus a PIP of extras for a total of 8 of the beauties
1 Gorax
Last night was the 3rd game I’ve played since I’ve been back, at the rate of about 1 game/week. Given the difficulties I’ve had with Kaya I’ve been running Krueger (non-epic) to try out more beat-stick modes of play with a little less subtlety (which seems to be Kaya’s method). My characterization may be wrong there but between tendrils, wind storm, and a woldwarden there’s a lot more straight up beat down, at least to my perception, than there is with Kaya - particularly when it comes to infantry, something I never did get much confidence at annihilating.
So to wit, last night’s bout with destiny was:
Krueger
Gorax
Warpwolf
Woldwarden
Woldwyrd
Blackclad Wayfarer
Druids of Orboros + UA
Gudrun (on loan)
Sentry Stone
Swamp Gobbers
Tharn Ravagers (4) + UA
Totem Hunter
The opponent ran a Epic Stryker Cygnar army. I forget all the details, but he had a unit of melee fearless sword dudes, two different units of ranged things (one of which was a ranger of some type, iirc), 2 chain gun weapon crews, one big fat warjack, the centurion perhaps, a lancer, and some goblin fellas who can repair jacks, . . the solo that throws grenades at stuff, another small jack, another solo, and . . I think one other thing. I suppose I should start documenting my opponents better. I found the iBodger app for my iPod which makes it a breeze to track armies.
In any event Gudrun rolled like crap but still managed to take out a solo and choke up his ranged infantry long enough to get my druids and warden into position for a little fun with the Devouring. Between that and Krueger’s feat I mopped up the infantry and the two weapon crews fairly easily. Totem Hunter single handedly (in two turns, of course), took out the entire 6 model unit of fearless sword dudes - fortunately, TH got 3 attacks on both his turns, and my opponent rolled poorly enough to miss me on his two chances.
On the left side of the board the ravagers + blackclad + lightning tendrils had some fun with the lancer. Took longer than it should have but I killed it, even with it surrounded by little healer manz. Blackclad’s storm beacon gave me a nice long distance charge - between that and the tendrils a 15“ threat range plus +2 on the attack made me realize this is a damned useful unit ‘o’ dudes. Not QUITE as awesome as the gatormen (I tried those last time, jeesh, I need a set of those), but still pretty handy.
However, by this time it was starting to get late and I started screwing up. Key features of my eventual defeat was that no, the warpwolf doesn’t have pathfinder and no, don’t put Primal on something if you aren’t certain there will be enemies around for it to be useful against. I killed my own woldwarden, and that’s never fun. Finally I wasn’t careful enough with Krueger and left him in range of Stryker’s absurd threat range who promptly wandered over and killed him. The store was closing in 7 minutes, the game had gone on for almost 4 hours, I think I can be forgiven for a little sloppy placement with so little time left to play and so much fatigue hitting my eyes.
I take nothing but positives from this match up however. My opponent indicated that my tactics were generally sound, and this was one of those games where I felt like a) I had plans and could execute them and b) I was actually capable of removing some of the enemy models off the board.
The sentry stone continues to impress the shit out of me for its point cost. I want to field 2 of these soon (altho, to be reasonable, one has felt like enough in a 750 pt game).
And Gudrun may be my next high priority acquisition.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
City of Heroes/Villians
So I have taken the plunge into another MMORPG, having been out of World of Warcraft for some time now and wanting to try something else, since, hey, I did get 3 years of fun out of that other product.
The differences between these games is pretty large, and after about 3 weeks of playing I’m pretty happy with what I am seeing.
I’ll start off by taking a crack at my main issues with WoW and discussing how those issues still apply, or don’t apply, to CoX - keeping in mind of course my highest level character at this point is 21, with a level 50 cap - so I’ve seen not all that much of the game at this point.
And . . large moment of panic because I had thought I misplaced my post of my issues with WoW. It appears it never made it to this gaming journal since I started it AFTER I wrote the post, and LiveJournal just got another nail in its coffin since it has no option to allow you to search your own posts I had to sift manually through all my drivel. For the curious, here’s the post in full -> http://winkytoonz.livejournal.com/23020.html
But in any case:
1) Lack of Permanence. CoX has some improvements in this area. Number 1: your “guild” has a home. A place to put shit, storage racks for members, dumping grounds for unneeded things that others could use, etc. Including portals to major areas, dramatically simplifying traveling. Plus you design your own base, put in tables and chairs, whatever you like. There’s even an access point for the bank.
Furthermore, on the character front, similar to the new WoW achievements you earn badges - badges for all sorts of shit, ranging from killing x of y to having spent enough time logged out at certain locations. I have played very little compared to my WoW time and I already have 30+ badges. And badges are viewable by anyone who cares to look - along with your character bio, which gives you room to RP a little if that is your bag.
However, we do have the mob respawning issue still, and other than your personal badge list and your supergroup base, no changes to any environments are possible. That said - they are adding a Mission Creator in the next update that will allow players to craft missions and supports 1000+ maps to choose from and tweak, which should prove interesting.
One thing to note - in CoX almost all quests are instanced - as in you rarely find yourself competing for spawns.
2) Skill. I can’t judge on this one yet. My suspicion is that it boils down to gear to a certain extent, but the powersets available to characters is significantly broader than in WoW. Then again most solo mission work seems to boil down to “shoot mob, make it run to you by hiding around a corner, kill mob, repeat”, with flavor variances based on class and playstyle. So I’m not seeing any indication of “skill” being a significant factor as yet - but at least, thank god, you can shoot at shit while you are flying, so tactics at the very least take a larger role in this game.
3) Variety. omgomgomg, was my first reaction. There is no “uniform” - you have, instead, the fact that how you physically look in game has zero impact on how much oomph your character has. There are 3 “genders” (male/female/giant male), with a great number of options as far as appearance - I’d hazard you could create several hundred unique looking characters just from the costume pieces and skin tones alone. Thus far I have yet to see two characters that looked exactly alike. Furthermore, since there is a large color palette to choose from besides, you just don’t run into folks who look alike. On top of that, as you progress you earn more costume sets which allow you to change your appearance on the fly to potentially a completely different look.
Absurdly rare items, while they exist - are not always a costume piece, either. Sometimes they are only visible to those looking at how you have enhanced your powers.
So while there is a “uniform” of sorts, it’s largely invisible - and has more to do with how much you wish to minmax your stats via enhancements, which in turn plug into powers on your powers screen, than to do with your physical appearance in game.
4) Problem Solving: thus far there have been zero puzzles. No victory here, just mindless explore/kill/get treasure.
So based on those issues, CoX is a definite improvement over Wow in some areas, and breaks even in others.
That said: there are some gameplay elements that are light years beyond the annoyance of Warcraft:
1) inventory management: while you do have to worry about it to some extent, you can go off and do quite a few missions before ever having to bother stopping off at a vendor or the Market to sell off stuff you don’t need. Much less inventory downtime
2) looting: you don’t have to. If that mob had something on him - it just appears in your inventory, with a little animated “Blah Blah FOUND” drifting contentedly across your screen. Almost all mobs give you both money and xp, as well.
3) “potions”, or inspirations, as they are called in CoX: these are oneshot things like health, mana, bonus defense for a short time, etc. ALL of them are available from vendors. You don’t have to farm them, and they can’t be created, so there is no market for them either. And they drop often and heavily besides.
4) Traveling: instead of needing to go to specific places and fly specific routes, all characters have the opportunity to choose a travel power. This in turn means you can get from place to place entirely on your own. Toss in portals inside your supergroup base, and you don’t even need that, just portal around from zone to zone (although some form of personal travel does make it easier for in zone travel). On top of that, there are a variety of temporary travel powers available - a personal favorite thus far is a rocket pack that will last a total of 2 hours. As in two hours of use. This world isn’t that big. Two hours is quite a bit, and the pack itself is way pricey for a level 5 but is dirt cheap for a level 25. So to get somewhere, there is a much greater sense of immediacy - and portals are immediate. There is no 5 minute flight or standing around waiting on a boat.
The down side of this is at level 20, having been running around with higher level friends, I haven’t seen much. Most of my maps are explored in little lines that run from portal to portal and I haven’t looked past them.
5) Leveling: leveling does NOT feel like a chore. In fact, they have added in a system that makes it fly by if you have a friend or two. In one form, the lower level character is promoted to a higher one, so that the lowbee can adventure with the higher leveled person. But - xp earned is earned as if you were your same old level. So you just scoot right along. In the other form, a higher leveled person can voluntarily lower their effective level to do low level missions with you - thus making it easier to do - and in this mode the person at an artificial lower level gains orders of magnitude more cash as they go. So you get more xp, they get more cash. Everyone wins.
That’ll do me for now, for my first impressions of CoX. Ta ta!
The differences between these games is pretty large, and after about 3 weeks of playing I’m pretty happy with what I am seeing.
I’ll start off by taking a crack at my main issues with WoW and discussing how those issues still apply, or don’t apply, to CoX - keeping in mind of course my highest level character at this point is 21, with a level 50 cap - so I’ve seen not all that much of the game at this point.
And . . large moment of panic because I had thought I misplaced my post of my issues with WoW. It appears it never made it to this gaming journal since I started it AFTER I wrote the post, and LiveJournal just got another nail in its coffin since it has no option to allow you to search your own posts I had to sift manually through all my drivel. For the curious, here’s the post in full -> http://winkytoonz.livejournal.com/23020.html
But in any case:
1) Lack of Permanence. CoX has some improvements in this area. Number 1: your “guild” has a home. A place to put shit, storage racks for members, dumping grounds for unneeded things that others could use, etc. Including portals to major areas, dramatically simplifying traveling. Plus you design your own base, put in tables and chairs, whatever you like. There’s even an access point for the bank.
Furthermore, on the character front, similar to the new WoW achievements you earn badges - badges for all sorts of shit, ranging from killing x of y to having spent enough time logged out at certain locations. I have played very little compared to my WoW time and I already have 30+ badges. And badges are viewable by anyone who cares to look - along with your character bio, which gives you room to RP a little if that is your bag.
However, we do have the mob respawning issue still, and other than your personal badge list and your supergroup base, no changes to any environments are possible. That said - they are adding a Mission Creator in the next update that will allow players to craft missions and supports 1000+ maps to choose from and tweak, which should prove interesting.
One thing to note - in CoX almost all quests are instanced - as in you rarely find yourself competing for spawns.
2) Skill. I can’t judge on this one yet. My suspicion is that it boils down to gear to a certain extent, but the powersets available to characters is significantly broader than in WoW. Then again most solo mission work seems to boil down to “shoot mob, make it run to you by hiding around a corner, kill mob, repeat”, with flavor variances based on class and playstyle. So I’m not seeing any indication of “skill” being a significant factor as yet - but at least, thank god, you can shoot at shit while you are flying, so tactics at the very least take a larger role in this game.
3) Variety. omgomgomg, was my first reaction. There is no “uniform” - you have, instead, the fact that how you physically look in game has zero impact on how much oomph your character has. There are 3 “genders” (male/female/giant male), with a great number of options as far as appearance - I’d hazard you could create several hundred unique looking characters just from the costume pieces and skin tones alone. Thus far I have yet to see two characters that looked exactly alike. Furthermore, since there is a large color palette to choose from besides, you just don’t run into folks who look alike. On top of that, as you progress you earn more costume sets which allow you to change your appearance on the fly to potentially a completely different look.
Absurdly rare items, while they exist - are not always a costume piece, either. Sometimes they are only visible to those looking at how you have enhanced your powers.
So while there is a “uniform” of sorts, it’s largely invisible - and has more to do with how much you wish to minmax your stats via enhancements, which in turn plug into powers on your powers screen, than to do with your physical appearance in game.
4) Problem Solving: thus far there have been zero puzzles. No victory here, just mindless explore/kill/get treasure.
So based on those issues, CoX is a definite improvement over Wow in some areas, and breaks even in others.
That said: there are some gameplay elements that are light years beyond the annoyance of Warcraft:
1) inventory management: while you do have to worry about it to some extent, you can go off and do quite a few missions before ever having to bother stopping off at a vendor or the Market to sell off stuff you don’t need. Much less inventory downtime
2) looting: you don’t have to. If that mob had something on him - it just appears in your inventory, with a little animated “Blah Blah FOUND” drifting contentedly across your screen. Almost all mobs give you both money and xp, as well.
3) “potions”, or inspirations, as they are called in CoX: these are oneshot things like health, mana, bonus defense for a short time, etc. ALL of them are available from vendors. You don’t have to farm them, and they can’t be created, so there is no market for them either. And they drop often and heavily besides.
4) Traveling: instead of needing to go to specific places and fly specific routes, all characters have the opportunity to choose a travel power. This in turn means you can get from place to place entirely on your own. Toss in portals inside your supergroup base, and you don’t even need that, just portal around from zone to zone (although some form of personal travel does make it easier for in zone travel). On top of that, there are a variety of temporary travel powers available - a personal favorite thus far is a rocket pack that will last a total of 2 hours. As in two hours of use. This world isn’t that big. Two hours is quite a bit, and the pack itself is way pricey for a level 5 but is dirt cheap for a level 25. So to get somewhere, there is a much greater sense of immediacy - and portals are immediate. There is no 5 minute flight or standing around waiting on a boat.
The down side of this is at level 20, having been running around with higher level friends, I haven’t seen much. Most of my maps are explored in little lines that run from portal to portal and I haven’t looked past them.
5) Leveling: leveling does NOT feel like a chore. In fact, they have added in a system that makes it fly by if you have a friend or two. In one form, the lower level character is promoted to a higher one, so that the lowbee can adventure with the higher leveled person. But - xp earned is earned as if you were your same old level. So you just scoot right along. In the other form, a higher leveled person can voluntarily lower their effective level to do low level missions with you - thus making it easier to do - and in this mode the person at an artificial lower level gains orders of magnitude more cash as they go. So you get more xp, they get more cash. Everyone wins.
That’ll do me for now, for my first impressions of CoX. Ta ta!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
GHWT, Fallout 3
GHWT
This game is some srs good times.
I got sucked in due to my desire to get as many songs as possible unlocked in quick play, so friends and so forth can assemble set lists they like and we can all drink and pretend to be musicians together. Thus, last Thursday I beat it on guitar career, medium difficulty, and over the weekend I completed all songs (3 of the gigs have to be purchased with your winnings) on medium. I have a few without five stars, but by and large it appears my leet skillz from GHIII carried over - I cleared every song the first time, over 90% of that with 5 stars.
Next up is hard. I tried the Jane’s Addiction song on the first gig on hard the other day. At first I thought I’d screwed up as there were no orange notes at all . . . until the end. Still, cleared it, with five stars, unbelievably.
So I tried it on expert. Whereupon I was booed off the stage at 18%.
I’m likely going to start a drum career next, which will be much, much, MUCH harder for a rhythmless white guy like me.
Fallout 3
I’m making slow but steady progress. I’m not interested in finishing the game rapidly, so I explore everything. I don’t even want to go on the main quest line yet but instead am spending my time exploring everything else I come across. In fact I skipped a step in the main quest line because I hadn’t made it to the GNR radio station before I made it to Rivet City - turns out I was supposed to go to River City after GNR, so I got credit for the Rivet City step having never been to GNR.
Last night, at level 11, I made it to the Tepid Sewers, a place I’m gathering from the internets most folks have done well before that. This was the first time I’ve done anything across the river. Dum dum duummmmmm. A full Tepid Sewers clear took me just over 2 hours, between the sneaking, the ammo conserving, the computer hacking, and the final bouts of schlepping all the crap back home for eventual sale. My locker in the house is full of at least half a dozen of most weapons “just in case”. This game is not the sort of game that will force a pack rat to change his ways. I think I’ve amassed something like 80 stimpacks to boot. And I never, never sell ammo. But with 100+ locations to explore, and me taking one to two hours each if it’s a building or dungeony like place, I’ve got a loooong way to go.
Blazing through the game on easy difficulty when I run through as an evil character who will be markedly less subtle than my current lock pick/sneaking/sniper guy should be quite the romp. For now I appreciate the depth of the challenge.
This game is some srs good times.
I got sucked in due to my desire to get as many songs as possible unlocked in quick play, so friends and so forth can assemble set lists they like and we can all drink and pretend to be musicians together. Thus, last Thursday I beat it on guitar career, medium difficulty, and over the weekend I completed all songs (3 of the gigs have to be purchased with your winnings) on medium. I have a few without five stars, but by and large it appears my leet skillz from GHIII carried over - I cleared every song the first time, over 90% of that with 5 stars.
Next up is hard. I tried the Jane’s Addiction song on the first gig on hard the other day. At first I thought I’d screwed up as there were no orange notes at all . . . until the end. Still, cleared it, with five stars, unbelievably.
So I tried it on expert. Whereupon I was booed off the stage at 18%.
I’m likely going to start a drum career next, which will be much, much, MUCH harder for a rhythmless white guy like me.
Fallout 3
I’m making slow but steady progress. I’m not interested in finishing the game rapidly, so I explore everything. I don’t even want to go on the main quest line yet but instead am spending my time exploring everything else I come across. In fact I skipped a step in the main quest line because I hadn’t made it to the GNR radio station before I made it to Rivet City - turns out I was supposed to go to River City after GNR, so I got credit for the Rivet City step having never been to GNR.
Last night, at level 11, I made it to the Tepid Sewers, a place I’m gathering from the internets most folks have done well before that. This was the first time I’ve done anything across the river. Dum dum duummmmmm. A full Tepid Sewers clear took me just over 2 hours, between the sneaking, the ammo conserving, the computer hacking, and the final bouts of schlepping all the crap back home for eventual sale. My locker in the house is full of at least half a dozen of most weapons “just in case”. This game is not the sort of game that will force a pack rat to change his ways. I think I’ve amassed something like 80 stimpacks to boot. And I never, never sell ammo. But with 100+ locations to explore, and me taking one to two hours each if it’s a building or dungeony like place, I’ve got a loooong way to go.
Blazing through the game on easy difficulty when I run through as an evil character who will be markedly less subtle than my current lock pick/sneaking/sniper guy should be quite the romp. For now I appreciate the depth of the challenge.
EVE
So I’ve not logged into my EVE online account in, probably some 3-4 months at this point. All that wasted time that could have been spent leveling up a new skill . ..
Except that the game itself has failed to pull me in, not even enough to pop in every 2 or 3 days and update skills. There are a combination of factors that I think have contributed to this:
1) Wars. I’m not a PVP guy, really. Particularly in a game where PVP skills equate to getting to your ideal radius before the other guy does - there’s very little twitch in EVE, by and large the result of the combat is already known ahead of time - not necessarily to the combatants, but logic and probability govern the fighting more than skill - at least in a one on one situation. I was not able to experience fleet combat - but I’d expect that to require a great deal of coordination and team play, and that is a big bucket of skill right there.
However - as I said I’m not a PVP guy. It’s fun to dabble in, but when I’m a lowbee broke ass puttering around in a poorly equipped cruiser, I don’t really look forward to leaving the station when the corporation I am in is likely in one war or another somewhere else - thus making me a sitting duck. In Warcraft, at least, you had a choice. In EVE, you do not. While this does create a bit more tense and interesting game play - somedays, I’m just not in the mood.
2) Environment. There are perhaps as many as a couple dozen “backdrops”. These are the images you see in any given solar system as you fly about outside of hyperspace. Different races have differently shaped space stations and jump gates.
That’s it. That’s all there is to look at. Asteroids all look alike, planets are great amorphous green/gray spheres that you can’t land on. You can’t get out of your ship to wander around the space station. You are in your tin can 100% of the time, except when you get blown up by somebody. To sum up: the game is visually monotonous (sexy missile and rocket explosions are a notable exception). While this is, of course, SPACE, the fact that you are limited to just viewing space, and never physically exploring planets, or looking at the chain of idiots dancing around in the space station, and so forth, coupled with the fact that all of your personal contacts, quest givers, etc, end up being little 1“ square static pictures, and the sense of immersion, at least for me, was highly lacking.
3) Crafting. There are blueprints out there for all sorts of things, from missile ammo to high end top of the line massive battleships. However - if it’s a high end item, you can only make it once. The blueprint is consumed/destroyed/exceeds its copyright limit, whatever you want to abstract it as, in the process. There are a few exceptions - but these special blue prints were apparently handed out in some sort of lottery to the big corporations at the time, and no one else will get one, ever. So that’s a bit of a bummer, as someone who likes crafting is basically relegated to the same boring shit as everyone else no matter how much time they spend on finding things.
4) Exploring. I had hoped I might find a Star Trek like niche in running some big ship out to all sorts of places. Well, the exploring ”mini game“ as it were is very realistic, and thus, very, very boring. Launch probes in a system. Fly to the probe that finds something. Launch more probes around that one. Fly to the probe that finds something. Continue in this way until you are using your shortest range probe, and if it finds something you can actually fly there.
Whereupon you will immediately be set upon by powerful NPC pirates who will kill you.
Thus, to explore, you need at least one buddy to come help you beat shit up so you can find this amazing artifact they were guarding . . . that will likely contain some research to allow you to (eventually) create one of those shiny blueprints.
That you can use only once.
Except that the game itself has failed to pull me in, not even enough to pop in every 2 or 3 days and update skills. There are a combination of factors that I think have contributed to this:
1) Wars. I’m not a PVP guy, really. Particularly in a game where PVP skills equate to getting to your ideal radius before the other guy does - there’s very little twitch in EVE, by and large the result of the combat is already known ahead of time - not necessarily to the combatants, but logic and probability govern the fighting more than skill - at least in a one on one situation. I was not able to experience fleet combat - but I’d expect that to require a great deal of coordination and team play, and that is a big bucket of skill right there.
However - as I said I’m not a PVP guy. It’s fun to dabble in, but when I’m a lowbee broke ass puttering around in a poorly equipped cruiser, I don’t really look forward to leaving the station when the corporation I am in is likely in one war or another somewhere else - thus making me a sitting duck. In Warcraft, at least, you had a choice. In EVE, you do not. While this does create a bit more tense and interesting game play - somedays, I’m just not in the mood.
2) Environment. There are perhaps as many as a couple dozen “backdrops”. These are the images you see in any given solar system as you fly about outside of hyperspace. Different races have differently shaped space stations and jump gates.
That’s it. That’s all there is to look at. Asteroids all look alike, planets are great amorphous green/gray spheres that you can’t land on. You can’t get out of your ship to wander around the space station. You are in your tin can 100% of the time, except when you get blown up by somebody. To sum up: the game is visually monotonous (sexy missile and rocket explosions are a notable exception). While this is, of course, SPACE, the fact that you are limited to just viewing space, and never physically exploring planets, or looking at the chain of idiots dancing around in the space station, and so forth, coupled with the fact that all of your personal contacts, quest givers, etc, end up being little 1“ square static pictures, and the sense of immersion, at least for me, was highly lacking.
3) Crafting. There are blueprints out there for all sorts of things, from missile ammo to high end top of the line massive battleships. However - if it’s a high end item, you can only make it once. The blueprint is consumed/destroyed/exceeds its copyright limit, whatever you want to abstract it as, in the process. There are a few exceptions - but these special blue prints were apparently handed out in some sort of lottery to the big corporations at the time, and no one else will get one, ever. So that’s a bit of a bummer, as someone who likes crafting is basically relegated to the same boring shit as everyone else no matter how much time they spend on finding things.
4) Exploring. I had hoped I might find a Star Trek like niche in running some big ship out to all sorts of places. Well, the exploring ”mini game“ as it were is very realistic, and thus, very, very boring. Launch probes in a system. Fly to the probe that finds something. Launch more probes around that one. Fly to the probe that finds something. Continue in this way until you are using your shortest range probe, and if it finds something you can actually fly there.
Whereupon you will immediately be set upon by powerful NPC pirates who will kill you.
Thus, to explore, you need at least one buddy to come help you beat shit up so you can find this amazing artifact they were guarding . . . that will likely contain some research to allow you to (eventually) create one of those shiny blueprints.
That you can use only once.
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