In my morning internet rounds, I came across the most depressing newspaper article ever. Aside from the topic, what strikes me is that it's an AP story, not something from some rinky-dink paper no one's ever heard of. The AP needs to put this guy back on his meds, and not let him write until they kick back in.
But just two stories under where I found that link, I found this. Kinda makes you forget all that doom and gloom for at least four and a half minutes.
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Also, interesting to note that Blogger thinks that "internet" is a misspelled word.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
The ITF and More
So, Sunday's ITF went well. Here's the thing: I get impatient with people sometimes. I know, shocking. I'm not into "herding cats." It's frustrating. This is a problem I don't seem to run into in RL, just in-game. Maybe because the discussion takes longer in text, maybe because consequences are only in-game as well. Maybe because people enjoy standing around and looking at characters and scenery as opposed to staring at walls. I don't know.
The ITF can be hard. I've done it six times, and succeeded twice. All but Sunday's were PuGs. Of course, that other success took an hour and 29 minutes. Yes, less than an hour and a half. I wanted ours to succeed, so I tried to work with the group make-up a bit. I wanted a "healer" or another defender, but settled for a scrapper. And I'm glad we got him. He was a good scrapper, and it turned out to be, oddly, an almost perfect mix. I say "almost" on a scale of no-death, super-fast, impractical and probably impossible perfect.
The first mission is easy. Even on the higher difficulty setting we had, it gave us no trouble. Second mission isn't too bad, but the complications of the ambushes and, to a lesser extent, the exploding crystals-- although they did seem to be complicated for our lone sk'ed villain. The third mission requires some tactics. Instead of standing around discussing it, I chose our tactics there at the end, with the pulling to the ledge instead of fighting through the groups, and dropping down to take out the computer. The fourth mission is hard. Go to the forums and you can read page after page and post after post of people discussing what to kill first, with what, and why all the other ways are WRONG. They're not wrong. It depends on the team make-up which way it's going to work the best. And, usually, the only way to figure out which way is best is to try it and see what happens. Luckily for us, the tactic we picked first worked, and worked well.
In other news, the plant/rad controller I created on a whim, Xylia Thorn, is level 41. She FLEW through level 1-38. I was amazed. For some reason, teams dropped off around 38, and the leveling has been slow going-- compared to what came before-- since then. The plant controller primary is... well, it's awesome. It's that Seeds of Confusion you get at level 8. It's an AoE confuse that that mind controllers don't get until level 32. And plant gets it at 8. Doesn't seem fair, does it? Too bad. Suck it, mind controllers. Carrion Creepers is awesome, too. It's like a field of really nifty looking temporary pets. Not to mention the actual pet, the giant fly trap. It's a Giant Fly Trap, on legs, that follows you around. Nothing else needs to be said. I want to get her to 50, because I can. Not because I need another controller or another rad at 50. ( I chose /rad again because it wasn't /empathy /force fields or /sonic, and OHGAWDNOT /thermal. Less buffing, more throwing Seeds of Confusion and Carrion Creepers at people.)
My other i12 experiments... well, poor Ashleigh. I haven't touched her since I made Xylia. I spent some crazy amount of influence on that Karma -KB IO for her, and haven't run her since. She may be on the chopping block. I wasn't overly impressed with the fire/fire scrapper. If she does get deleted, though, she's getting respeced to take that IO out. It was way too expensive to just throw away.
Then there's Lunatrix. I have to say, I'm not overly impressed with the psychic blast/mental manipulation power sets. I like blasters. I have, you know, just a bit of experience with blasters. Maybe if that wasn't true, I wouldn't be disappointed. But it just seems lackluster to me. Too many gimmicks, not quite enough damage. It's not awful, but compared to other blasters I've played, I'm just not impressed. It's not unplayable, but if I'd made it on a random PuG character, it probably would have been deleted for disinterest.
(Also, I'll take a minute and admit to my absolute hatred of the ice shields. I do not want to be a giant ice cube. A huge draw of the game for me was the character creator. Yes, I realize a large part of the reason why CoH has so many female players is because of the dress-up doll aspect of the game, and I'm secure enough the my tough-grrl aspect of my personality to admit to that. If I wanted to be a giant block of something, I'd go play Runescape (very short trial period with that a few years back). On the other hand... the ice shields are wonderful for keeping a psychic blapper on her feet, and practically making her a tank... So, shields plz. *sigh*)
But...
Something odd happened. Luna's duo partner was scheduled to be Defender Vagz, for the sake of "this is what we're making when power proliferation in i12 happens," not, "these characters will get along well." Personalities was not factored in AT ALL. In fact, if anything, I thought it would go badly. The characters, though, had other ideas. It turned out to be... interesting, to say the least. The interactions between the characters is what's keeping me playing and wanting to play Lunatrix. Weird how things work out sometimes.
The ITF can be hard. I've done it six times, and succeeded twice. All but Sunday's were PuGs. Of course, that other success took an hour and 29 minutes. Yes, less than an hour and a half. I wanted ours to succeed, so I tried to work with the group make-up a bit. I wanted a "healer" or another defender, but settled for a scrapper. And I'm glad we got him. He was a good scrapper, and it turned out to be, oddly, an almost perfect mix. I say "almost" on a scale of no-death, super-fast, impractical and probably impossible perfect.
The first mission is easy. Even on the higher difficulty setting we had, it gave us no trouble. Second mission isn't too bad, but the complications of the ambushes and, to a lesser extent, the exploding crystals-- although they did seem to be complicated for our lone sk'ed villain. The third mission requires some tactics. Instead of standing around discussing it, I chose our tactics there at the end, with the pulling to the ledge instead of fighting through the groups, and dropping down to take out the computer. The fourth mission is hard. Go to the forums and you can read page after page and post after post of people discussing what to kill first, with what, and why all the other ways are WRONG. They're not wrong. It depends on the team make-up which way it's going to work the best. And, usually, the only way to figure out which way is best is to try it and see what happens. Luckily for us, the tactic we picked first worked, and worked well.
In other news, the plant/rad controller I created on a whim, Xylia Thorn, is level 41. She FLEW through level 1-38. I was amazed. For some reason, teams dropped off around 38, and the leveling has been slow going-- compared to what came before-- since then. The plant controller primary is... well, it's awesome. It's that Seeds of Confusion you get at level 8. It's an AoE confuse that that mind controllers don't get until level 32. And plant gets it at 8. Doesn't seem fair, does it? Too bad. Suck it, mind controllers. Carrion Creepers is awesome, too. It's like a field of really nifty looking temporary pets. Not to mention the actual pet, the giant fly trap. It's a Giant Fly Trap, on legs, that follows you around. Nothing else needs to be said. I want to get her to 50, because I can. Not because I need another controller or another rad at 50. ( I chose /rad again because it wasn't /empathy /force fields or /sonic, and OHGAWDNOT /thermal. Less buffing, more throwing Seeds of Confusion and Carrion Creepers at people.)
My other i12 experiments... well, poor Ashleigh. I haven't touched her since I made Xylia. I spent some crazy amount of influence on that Karma -KB IO for her, and haven't run her since. She may be on the chopping block. I wasn't overly impressed with the fire/fire scrapper. If she does get deleted, though, she's getting respeced to take that IO out. It was way too expensive to just throw away.
Then there's Lunatrix. I have to say, I'm not overly impressed with the psychic blast/mental manipulation power sets. I like blasters. I have, you know, just a bit of experience with blasters. Maybe if that wasn't true, I wouldn't be disappointed. But it just seems lackluster to me. Too many gimmicks, not quite enough damage. It's not awful, but compared to other blasters I've played, I'm just not impressed. It's not unplayable, but if I'd made it on a random PuG character, it probably would have been deleted for disinterest.
(Also, I'll take a minute and admit to my absolute hatred of the ice shields. I do not want to be a giant ice cube. A huge draw of the game for me was the character creator. Yes, I realize a large part of the reason why CoH has so many female players is because of the dress-up doll aspect of the game, and I'm secure enough the my tough-grrl aspect of my personality to admit to that. If I wanted to be a giant block of something, I'd go play Runescape (very short trial period with that a few years back). On the other hand... the ice shields are wonderful for keeping a psychic blapper on her feet, and practically making her a tank... So, shields plz. *sigh*)
But...
Something odd happened. Luna's duo partner was scheduled to be Defender Vagz, for the sake of "this is what we're making when power proliferation in i12 happens," not, "these characters will get along well." Personalities was not factored in AT ALL. In fact, if anything, I thought it would go badly. The characters, though, had other ideas. It turned out to be... interesting, to say the least. The interactions between the characters is what's keeping me playing and wanting to play Lunatrix. Weird how things work out sometimes.
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