Hythia

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Edit: The word for Octo 27 was ‘Leg’.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So the event is over, and while it was kind of cool, it was very chaotic and less of an event and more of a mass constant brawl. During it all at random intervals and at random points on the map portals would show up ( oddly enough, they were using the Ruluruu portal object, it even was Ruluruu faction ) and out of it would pour hordes of lvl 50 Longbow agents. Well, while they were level 50 they actually were all treated as Giant Monsters so we didn’t get slaughtered but it made for some long knockdown-dragout fights.

But the high points were when the Dev’s would show up. There were a lot of Dev’s running around named things like “Agent Hawk” who was a uber-Longbow agent ( prick had the Storm Summoning pool, I hate being on the recieving end of a Giant Monster’s hurricane ) but occasionally one of the main dev’s would be on as one of the Phalanx heroes. I only saw four of them myself.

Synapse, Sister Psyche and the Back Alley Brawler showed up once as a group when I was there and we took Synapse out, but the Brawler ran away and while we could get Psyche down to half, her Repulsion Field kept anyone from getting close enough to actually hit her.

Later those three showed up as a group again with Positron in tow and that time we took out Synapse and the Brawler, but Positron we couldn’t keep held for long enough to keep him from healing himself and we still couldn’t get into melee with Psyche.

One good moment was when Synapse stopped running around for a couple seconds to taunt someone on ‘local’ and reply to a taunt someone else said and a dozen or so stalkers all landed crit’s on him from out of hide and took a huge chunk from his health. Both times he fell it was largely due to the herd of corruptors who were enjoying the huge scourge damage they could do to him when his health got low.

I missed actually seeing the Brawler go down though, I was too busy trying to get a hold to stick on Positron and failing, but that was apparently a pretty epic fight as well.

But I got some good screenshots I’ll have to go through tomorrow and add on to this post then. After the event was over we got everyone we could in zone to gather back up around Kalinda, the first contact you get, and use the ‘holdtorch’ emote so there is a couple shots of about a hundred of us holding up torches and asking for more heroes to spawn so we can beat on them.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So my CoV Collector’s Edition box arrived today. It contains:

CoV/CoH Art Collection book
CoV Game Manual
CoV DVD
CoH CCG Demo Deck ( Positron 2005 Preview 2 deck w/ Statesman hero card from Preview 1 )
Poster / Rogue Isles map
2005 NCSoft Product Catalog
Ad for CoV Time Card
Ad for CoH Novel “The Web of Arachnos”
Coupon for Top Cow comics website, expiring at the end of Jan 2006
Quick Reference Guide
14 day free trials of CoH for myself and a friend
Seven Hero Clix figures ( Positron, Manticore, Statesman ( w/ cape ), Lord Recluse, Black Scorpion, Captain Mako, Ghost Widow )

When I register the game code, it should also unlock a couple in-game items, the Arachnos chest-emblem and cape costume item.

My impressions of it… The Art Collection Book is cool, but I am a geek like that. Had some cool art in the CoH side showing Stateman’s previous costumes in the past, his 1930s and 1950s style costumes, as well as some neat concept art for some of the CoH villains.

The Game Manual sucks. Not too surprising, but it does. It isn’t even useful like the CoH one is in listing powersets. While the CoH one was out of date almost before the game was released, they didn’t even try to list the powerset info in the CoV one. Plus, where CoH had “Statesman Sez”, CoV has “Lord Recluse Intones” and even worse then that he refers to himself in third-person in at least one of them. Ugh.

Actually, the best parts of the manual is the flavor-text talking about the three PvP zones and the part talking about bases ( I hadn’t realized I could adjust floor height in them, will have to try that ).

The Poster / Map isn’t bad. The map at least shows which CoH zones you can use to get to the new PvP zones ( Steel Canyon door to Siren’s Call, Steel Canyon helicopter to Bloody Bay, King’s Row helicopter to Warburg? ).

The CCG demo deck is uh.. Interesting. Game comes out in November and I am sure I will pick it up, but the demo deck… Got a Positron demo deck and it is just awfully setup. I can’t actually ever put one of the cards in play because the demo deck doesn’t include the needed pre-requisite card. The part that bugs / perplexes me more is that the little instructional manual that came with it mentions “Most exciting will be the opportunity for players of the online game to get access to special promotional cards though completing in-game goals, and for players of the card game to unlock special in-game items in the online game by competing in card game leagues and tournaments.” Part of me thinks “Neat!” and the other part of me ( the insane completionist ) thinks “Aw fuck, going to have to nag a game store owner nearby to setup a league for this game now…”.

Either way, I think the Art Collection Book alone made it worth my extra few bucks for the Collector’s Edition.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

One word, sixty seconds. Write your bit, then post it here as a comment.

OneWord

Edit: The word for Octo 26 was ‘Leg’.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So my Fire/Fire Dominator just hit 10 a few minutes ago and formed an SG in the CoV beta. Of which today is the last day. But at least I made it in time to take a peek at the base editing stuff and new SG interface.

So, bases. You start with a tiny little plot, which is thankfully big enough to do a minimal PvE only base with all the basic facilities ( Workshop, Control, Power, Medical, and Teleporter rooms ) because the next plot size up gets expensive. The basic SG base plot “TinyHiddenSpot” is free, and is an 8×8 grid. The next one up, “Hidden Spot” is a 12×12 grid for 3.3 million Prestige. Won’t even bother looking at the ‘Secure’ spots yet ( basically they let you place more defensive items in rooms )since the smallest ‘Secure’ plot, “Small Secure Location” is 12×16 and 11.25 million Prestige. This is JUST for the land to build the base on.

Anyways, playing around I did confirm that the basic bootstrap base design would work on the basic grid, and that it would cost about 2 million prestige to build without any decorations in the base, and while a bit frustrated that I couldn’t build a teleporter yet ( Have to actually craft one at the workshop tables to teleport to zones. You can buy a teleporter that is used only in Raids, but it wouldn’t fit in the room I built for it anyways. ) it was still pretty neat to play with it. Definately “Sims Of Villains” sort of base building.

Also found out that the SG gets 20k bonus Prestige for every member who joins for the first 15 members, which is pretty cool too. Nice little bonus to help get started. Going from 300k to 2m is less daunting looking at least then getting to the same goal from 0.

The Items of Power don’t really impress me that much. The four you can buy in the Beta right now ( in the Live game it’ll be a Trial or mission to get them apparently ) are “Anger Monument” for a 1% damage increase, “Torment Monument” for a 1% debt repayment bonus, “Monument of Iron” for a 1% psi damage resist bonus, and “Fury Monument” for a 1% earned EXP increase. So the bonuses really aren’t all that exciting for something that requires a special room to keep it in and I think a Raid capable base in Live to place them at all.

The other interesting one was looking at the workshops and the types of Salvage you can process into making stuff. Among the factions you can get Tech salvage from were… 5th Column, Axis America, and Spetnatz Commandos. Two groups that I didn’t think were going to be accessible anymore ( though it has always been rumored that they were going to make a come back ) and a Russian special forces unit? Wacky. Can’t wait to find out where you fight them all at.

That is all for the moment though. Supposed to be a big event later today to end the Beta with, “Statesman’s Strike” upon the Rogue Isles or something. Not sure how that is going to work. *shrugs* But will try to snag screenshots if I figure it out at least.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

One word, sixty seconds. Write your bit, then post it here as a comment.

OneWord

Edit: The word for Octo 25 was ‘Leg’.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So watching VH1 this morning, actually still early enough in the day that they are playing videos ( Depeche Mode’s “Precious” right now, keep thinking about picking up their new CD ) and getting the CoV Beta and Issue 6 downloaded. Took far less time then expected, about 45 minutes for each, on my younger sister’s cable modem connection.

Playing around in the CoV Beta right now. Just have to say… Wow. The change in the physics model for the way people move and respond to being hit, the added particle effects for animations ( playing a Fire/Fire Dominator right now, several of my fire attacks send sparks flying into the landscape where they burn for a little bit ), just make it truly amazing to look at. Going to make CoH feel new again too if these make it back into CoH with Issue 6.

Hit 4th as a Fire/Fire Dominator so far, actually almost 5th. The intro missions are pretty cool and while I can imagine I would get bored of doing them over and over, they are a nice change from the CoH intro ones. The starting zone, Mercy Island is really a wasteland of ruined buildings and debris in the streets. Very cool.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

One word, sixty seconds. Write your bit, then post it here as a comment.

OneWord

Edit: The word for Octo 24 was ‘Supply’.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

I forgot what I originally sat down to write. I opened this browser window up to post a bit to my blog, and then while waiting for it to load went and read the blogs of several friends and forgot what I had to say by the time I got back to my own.

Not that this is stopping me from writing something, too stubborn for that. Instead you’ll just get whatever random junk flows from my fingertips instead of the insightful and well thought out bit I would have written in the first place.

Full Metal Alchemist was on again last night. Another pretty damned amazing episode. Finally got to see Greed in action, and pretty much all of the homunculi who have been met so far had some play in the episode. Still leaving me confused over who the seventh one will be and what they will be like though. We have yet to meet Pride or Vanity or whatever it will be called I think. Definately need to pick up the fifth dvd of the series now that it is out ( it came out on the 18th, I think ) though I really wish they were being released more swiftly. I can’t tell if I missed three episodes including the last one of season one, or if I missed seven and the last five of season one ( I missed two during the raid on lab five story-arc ).

Inu-Yasha was also on last night, and I missed a whole huge chunk of the story a while back leading up through the beginning of the Band of Seven story-arc. But it is a bit more action and less depth to the story when compared to FMA so I find myself pondering what I missed less and more enjoying what is happening now.

Gaming project is kind of stuttering or sputtering over the weekend. Had expected that with people having more free time over the weekend that people would be sounding off or trying to get more involved in it and no one has done or really said a damned thing on it all weekend. I got nominated ( okay, I volunteered first ) into taking a leading role but… Damn. I wonder if we are all sitting around and waiting for someone else to be the next person to say something because none of us want to offend everyone else. One of those awkward silences that are dragging out for days.

Huh. Just got a call on my celphone that I missed but it is coming back “#Restricted” for the phone number so no clue who or what it was that tried to ring me up.

Sometime in the evening tonight I am dragging my computer over to my younger sister’s house because she has a nice fast cable modem so I can get the CoV beta downloaded and Issue 6 for CoH. Two freakishly huge files to pull down… Going to leave my computer over there overnight and head over again in the morning to spend the day babysitting the downloads.

Almost noon now, going to go get breakfast now and try to make at least a feeble attempt at getting my day finally started.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

One word, sixty seconds. Write your bit, then post it here as a comment.

OneWord

Edit: The word for Octo 23 was ‘Commando’.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)