Which, since I’m headed off to Vacation some more, isn’t going to change soon.

But I’ve been doing a bit of CoX play, actually got onto a high-level PUG that wasn’t doing AE farming (or even AE), and enjoyed myself immensely, despite that godawful lag.

Need to play more …

What I’d almost rather see these days is actual emotive faces. A baseline face that you can make smile or frown or grimace. That would be nice.

I was disappointed to discover that there’s no Hair Lightning as an aura. I don’t want my eyes to be all lightiningy — I want my brain to be. I am The Gifted Kid, dagnabbit!

I was looking the other day for some of the new juggling emotes. Alas, as BAB explains, the Quickmenu isn’t designed to deal with conditional emotes (juggling is from the Mystic booster pack). Though he indicates (without telling how) that you can actually edit the Quickmenu file …

If you want to be in future closed betas, make constructive comments on the existing I15 open beta.

Reichsman has 226K HP? Yikes! Though it’s good to hear that he has a “considerably lower than standard regen rate.”

T-shirts! Meesa want! Well, actually … nice enough, but nothing compelling enough to make me break my oft-broken vow of No More T-Shirts Until I Get Rid of Many of the Ones I Already Have. 

Ah.

I was a bit hesitant when I saw the team was gathering for some Mission Architect play, but as it turned out, it was actually fun. It was refreshing play some AE that was interesting, with a good group, and (most importantly) not farming. Which we did, including a few missions that were a real hoot.

While I did see some farming requests at AE between mishes (”PLZ INVIT LVL 42 LF AE FARM!”), they were few and far between.

I might have to go hang out there more often.

I was actually inspired enough, when all was over, to hop onto Lady Zebra and look for some scrapper action. Alas, nobody was inviting in the low 30s on Virtue by that time of night, so I did some solo mishes, enjoyed them immensely, then welcomed Margie home.

One of the nice things noted here (in context of the munitions) is that, once you’ve acquired a given weapon form, then as you get additional powers and enhancements, you can apply them to the forms you have / want. Love those pistols? You can keep using them with your added attacks. Want to be carrying around an arsenal? Sounds like you can.

Customization = good. I hate being stuck with either a single weapon (see CoX AR Blasters) or have to trade in the weapon I like for the latest most-powerful thing I’ve found (see LotRO).

Also: new screen shots.

In the meantime, news that’s been accumulating in the in-box …

Champs Online:

• A nice article on thematic power set building through “frameworks.” Rather than focusing on archetypes, the CO folks are trying to let people do a lot more picking and choosing of different types of powers amongst varied sets. Will this add welcome flexibility, create confusion, or let min-maxxers unbalance the game? Should be interesting to see, but it sounds promising.
• I am so pleased that “power armor” is its own power set. That’s been a serious frustration for me in CoX.
• Another good survey interview here. One interesting note: Cryptic basically bought the Champions property, and is licensing it back to Hero Games.
• And yet another review of the game, with some good information. Not sure that the “console” orientation is a plus, but there’s plenty of positive stuff conveyed.
• How to make sure players don’t make nekkid characters.

City of Heroes:

• I15 Open Beta is … open? Cool!
• More on the I15 Fifth Column content.
• Badges? We don’t need no steenkin’ Mission Architect badges! Which is good, because most of the farming-inducing ones are going away. (More info.)
• Ooooh … canon questions (and answers)!

Be heroic! (Or, if you swing that way, villainous!) We’ll see you when we get back.

Plusses: gorgeous, lots of character creation options, a power-switching mechanism that makes gameplay a bit more easy and varied.

I have to say here that of all of the MMORPGs I’ve played over the years, Champions Online has, hands down, some of the most stunning graphics I’ve seen in an MMORPG. The team decided to go for a cel-shaded comic book style with this game, and let me tell you, it works.

[...] In combat, players can ‘charge’ their attacks to make them do more damage, or gain extra utility in their execution. Not only this, but the game utilizes a form of ‘endurance,’ that goes up as players use light damage ‘charging’ moves, and is then expended when the player uses a heavy damage ‘draining’ move. Think of it like the Warrior’s ‘Rage’ system in World of Warcraft, or the Warpriest / Disciple of Khaine in Warhammer Online.

Interestingly, the game only allows players the ability to use seven abilities in any given scenario. Players can switch between three ‘roles,’ each with a customizable ability toolbar of 7 abilities. This effectively gives players a total of 21 powers to use when switching between one of their three stances, although switching stances comes with a yet to be determined cooldown. What this effectively does is allows players to break out of the one-character one-role cliché, and it doesn’t clutter up combat with 50+ skills.

Minuses: Clunky and not-yet-terribly informative UI, some repetitious content early on

All in all, Champions Online is shaping up to be a solid MMORPG, even if it is in beta, and for anyone interested in non-stop action and incredible character development depth, I’d highly suggest this beautiful MMORPG.

The face-off underscores an iron law of MMO play: Give participants the tools to mold a game into an ideal form, and they’ll quickly use them to generate so-called min-max exploits that produce the fastest possible experience or in-game wealth for the least effort possible.

Free to play the game as they like, players frequently make choices that ruin the fun. It’s an irony that can prove death to game publishers: Far from loving their liberty, players seem to quickly bore of the “ideal” games they’ve created for themselves and quit early.

The article gets a bit apocalyptic over what the undefined (and unpredictable) crack-down on AE farming might mean to CoX — if people will leave an “unfair” situation once other super-hero MMORPGs come online. I don’t think that’s the worry. Instead, I think AE was a tremendous opportunity to instill some new life into CoX (steady new content and QoL improvements notwithstanding). Unfortunately, the flood of farming has turned a lot of potentially creative folks off of the Mission Architect (too little signal to noise), and the PLers, who are bearing the brunt of the crackdown, were the folks most likely to jump ship anyway,

Because of the folks “racing to the bottom,” and the Devs inability to predict or prevent them before the fact, one of CoX’s best chances for some serious reinvigoration may have been lost.