City of Heroes vs Champions Online

Well, I've played them both, again. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Both look like the could be fun. Let's see how they stack up.


MOVEMENT-CoH
Both let you run fast/jump high/fly/teleport. CO you pick one after you finish the introduction. You don't get any groovy graphics if you don't pay, but you get them all. Their movement powers are tiered, so once you are out of combat, you are slow. X time later you speed up, Y time after that you speed again. The time is not long, ten seconds or so, so not a big deal. The problem is, the speeds aren't all that fast compared to CoH. In wow terms, it feels like BC style regular flight, just not super fast.

CoH you get fast speed/jump and flight at lvl one(cannot fly till out of starter area). The baseline ones aren't that fast. But around lvl four, when you are picking a new power, you can choose an amazingly upgraded travel power instead of a new ability. Min/max might not agree with sound that, but since when did superheroes care about min/maxing(looking at you, Jubilee).


COMBAT-Tie.
I won't say one is better then the other, they are too different. CO has resource building and resource consuming abilities. Some abilities can be charged up, doing more damage but consuming more time/resources.

CoH has a resource, but I have yet to run out of it. CoH's big thing is ALL abilities have a CD. When you first start playing the game, this is horrible. You only start with on primary, one secondary, and two abilities that basically deal no damage. Now that I'm level 10, I have enough abilities to not use the crappy ones, but still not have any gaps in my gameplay.


CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION- CoH
I'm going to only talk about looks here, abilities will be in a different section. Both games have the same basic options, you pick the gear(looks only), colors and all. The look you pick is what your toon will look like for it's career. Gear doesn't change the look, so no stupid early expansion clown looks. You're character ALWAYS looks like you wanted it to. The difference between the two is they CoH has WAY more options.


LOOKS-CoH
CO looks like a comic strip, including "Frap" in a jagged bubble over baddies names. CoH looks normal. I prefer normal.



CHARACTER ABILITY CUSTOMIZATION-CoH
Not going into depth here. CO-you pick your class, travel power. The end. Everything else is automatic. CoH is completely customizable. Granted, that means if you care about min/max there are wrong ways to do this that will completely make you toon gimp(I'm assuming, haven't looked it up) but we don't care about min/maxing, because we're freaking superheroes.




So, I think it's fairly obvious which game I support. I gave them 15 bucks for a month of VIP, so I could try out most of the classes. More to follow.

A game affair

Well, I can only mess with computers for so long before I start getting frustrated, so limiting my troubleshooting to a small, undefined amount each day. That opens a noticeable chunk of my day that should involve some type of activity. Normally I'd start a woodworking project, but I'm moving soon, so don't want to mess up the garage I just cleaned. NEW MMO!!!!!!!

Yesterday I played some WOW, but I'm still not feeling playing that atm(does it seem like the more popular the game, the worse the people you meet in it?). Looked at aion, and while trying to figure out what my login name was when I played it, I rediscovered my ncsoft login for City of Heroes.

I remember trying a couple if hero games awhile back, one had fairly poor combat mechanics and I stopped playing during the intro, the other was decent. No clue which is which.

City of Heroes was the one with poo combat. BUT, after downloading it, figured I might as well give it another go. I am currently pleasantly surprised. You get used to the combat, feels poor cause all abilities have a cool down, so there are gaps in button smashing, and it auto targets poorly, but is manageable with time. The quests are very super heroy feeling, there are random people that need saving(no reward, but the npcs thank you). Plus there are bits of humor thrown throughout.

So far, seems like the best bet for F2P I've seen in a bit. We'll see how long it's interesting.

Life's little hiccups.

So, family left the area this morning. I was up late last night watching UFC, and the wife woke up with the kids so I slept in till 9(!!). Walk downstairs. Coffee. Smoke. GAMETIME!!!! Load up the game, start hitting up the rewards guy for my boxes of bank filling. Two year old comes over. "up". Lift into lap. Shift toons. More boxes. Two year old uses keyboard as a slide to leave lap. Screen blank. RESTART!! Coffee refill while restarting. Smoke. Launch vanguard. Crash before character screen. Launch vanguard. Crash before character screen. Commence troubleshooting. Cry.



Ok, this is annoying. Run as admin, nothing. Check files, they're ok. Uninstall reinstall, still crashing. Completely delete and redownload(which takes all day with my crap Internet), still broken.

I'm going to bed, I have work in7 hours, hopefully I think of something, cause I'm currently stumped.

Unicorns are awesome!

    Finished up the unicorn quest this week, it's nice to be fast.  This quest line is one of the things that I love about this game, epic quest lines for epic rewards is a good thing.  Almost every quest in the chain is a group quest, while I was able to solo it with my Disciple, a lot of classes will struggle without a group.  I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but my unicorn is instant cast, which is an amazing feature. 



    In other news, my folks are in town to see the amazing cuteness that is their new granddaughter, so not much gametime for me this week.  See you all after!  Happy fathers day to all applicable

Novice Artificer Quests

Ok, I was a big time crafter when Vanguard first launched, I have more crafting levels then adventuring levels, but it's been awhile. I'm going to be posting about the big time quests, just so I have a reference that I know is up to date if/when I want to do this again, plus a reference that makes sense for if anyone else asks me the same questions. Today I'm doing the Qalia Novice quests, for Artificer. This quest starts in Ahgrim, starting with Sajin Callash. Easily found by asking a guard for directions to the artificer trainer.

Ok, Saj will give you some temp. recipes to craft, and make you go all over Qalia to learn the secretsssessss from the masters. First is Serin Talah, in Hathor Zi. Take the rift to Hathor Zi, run down to the crafting area, shouldn't be that hard. Talk and bingo, ready to go

Next up, head to Khal. I recomend getting a wyvern right by Hathor Zi rift, cause you will have to cross the water to talk to the Khal person, Shaliz Talhani.

Then, back to the rift, head to Qa Riverbank, and you'll be (hopefully) flying to Mekalia(you did get that wyvern for 25 copper, right?) Fly to Mekalia, ask for the Artificer trainer directions, and Silaskun Lojay should be nearby.

Now, double check you have the weakened timber you need, and head back to Ahgrim. You will need 6 weakened timbers to make the items for the quest.

  Remember, when making items for this quest, choose the basic style.

Turn in the quests, and you can get your basic qalia recipes!

Pictures in posts

OK, I know that my post about my house was the fountain of bad. I can't make the pictures do what I want in Blogger. I see posts where the text is above/below the picture, but mine keeps going around it too. Makes my picture posts look bad. I was making a post showing a crafting quest, but it looks too bad to be usable for anything. Any pointers from an expert would help!!

Ruling the Roost

So I figured I'd never get my house done enough to show anyone, so might as well just show what I have. So this is my house, as viewed from my Disciple. Notice the awesome cave behind my house, how cool is my backyard? So this is my bedroom, viewed by my DK. The bed is smashing a bunch of Vetrens reward beds together, the shelving is actually tables I flipped upside down and brought up to the roof. This is as far as I've gotten actually getting anything done. And, as you can see, even this is pretty sparse atm. Empty shelves, I'm living like I'm 20 again. The rest I'll show, but remember, I'm still in progress I don't know how the pro's do things, but I just throw all my crap out and figure out what I want to do with it later. Obviously "later" hasn't arrived for my dining set yet. And last, the walkway leading up to the bedroom. Love the two story houses design.

I has main?

I think it might of happened. I might of picked a class to level. I'm not promising anything, but it is definatly possible. The winner is....... Disciple!! Good damage(so far). Great survivability(so far). Awesome Kung fu. What's not to love?

Got him to level 20 last night, so now comes the hard part, but so far I can solo pretty much everything I want, up to and including 4 dot mobs/quests. We'll see as we go.




I plan on doing pictures here, but I'll be damned if I can find my screenshot folder on my pc. Searching online says it should be in my Vanguard/screenshot folder, but that doesn't exist for me. I might try to take some with my iPhone and do it that way, but seems a bit bootleg for my tastes. If you posses the knowledge I need to make this work, please hook me up.

Shelter for everyone!

Well, looks like June rewards are in. Lots of stuff to be had, but one thing of significance- houses!

Way back in the day, I had a tier 5 house that I farmed with friends. Furniture, chests, storage, houses in Vanguard are where it's at. Unfortunately there have been numerous server merges since I stopped playing, so I lost my house. In addition, I also gained extra crap in my bags that used to be in my chests, including the chests themselves. I've been playing my least favorite mmo mini game upon my return to vanguard, inventory management. Every toon I'm on is loaded down with crafting mats that used to hang out in my house. SOE to the rescue!

The June veterans rewards gives you a tier 3 house of your choice, any style you want. The only catch is there is one thing you need to buy from a special housing vendor, which costs basically nothing. So, I roll over to the vendor and notice the housing escrow npc standing right next to him. Why not see if I have something in escrow, just in case.

Yup, I'm dumb. My old house is right there, staring me in the face....


So, I'm now decorating my house again. Love this part of the game.



Top tip, type /claim in game. They give out rewards(or used to) for subbing. Lots of free furniture in them!

Back in business

Baby is born, guests are gone, game time!

I'm back in Vanguard due to watching a newborn. I need to be able to stop playing and feed/change at a moments notice, and soloing mmo's is my preferred game for those times. Got a psyonist to 10 on the island of dawn, and have one spot left on my character slots, so trying to figure out what I want. I want to get my last toon off the isle tonight if I can, so I can score an awesome boat before we get the new rewards. I guess we'll see what happens.

Now that I'm back, I'll start posting more regularly.