Enough Already

     So not much to talk about in my day to day gaming atm, I've been in one of my "game nonstop for a couple hours followed by no gaming for a day" moods recently, plus the end of a good book series/children being cute, so not much to talk about.  I have been concentrating mostly on CoH since VG told me to eat it, and some sort of post is upcoming for that.  What I want to talk about today is the things that I'm done seeing in my games.  Just a growing list of the things that I would love to see go away and never return. 


      VENDOR TRASH- It's really time for this to go.  How much time does one really spend enjoying how awesome this crap that was designed just to give you something to sell for minimal cash?  I'm sick and tired of playing the inventory management game.  Just have things I kill drop cash, or if immersion is a factor, increase quest rewards of quests that require me to kill non humanoids.  How many games don't have something awesome that you want in the game(housing, etc) because of the developers time it takes to implement, yet they have a metric butt ton of different, flavorful vendor trash that had to be programed in. 

    DAILY COOLDOWNS-I have alot of things going on during the week, while I still game, I can't join groups/do things that require my full attention because of RL stuff.  Why do we have daily quests/dungeons(name it what you want, you know what I mean).  Make it repeatable 7 times a week.  Look at that, takes the same amount of time to accomplish, yet YOU get to choose when to do it, instead of having to pound out one a day.  How amazing.

   PVP STATS-A game comes out, you don't start it right at launch, or you dick off and make a thousand alts before you figure out what you want to be, or whatever.  Regardless, you find yourself finally at max level and ready to start trying out the PVP of the game.  Guess what, you are not powerful enough  to kill most people, and too weak to live against their attacks, because they have the magical PVP stat that you lack.  I know why this exists, it's to keep PVP gear being better then PVE gear for fighting players.  But it turns PVP into less a skill based game, and more another gear grind, until you are as geared as the rest, then the skill comes back into it.  I do not have a good way to fix this, but it is time for it to go. 

   ADVENTURE OR GTFO-I can't really be a serious raider because of my job, so my options in most games is to raid with people, then stop playing for a couple of months(because of work), then have them catch me up to where they are/find a new group to raid with.  Why can't you make things other then adventuring equal citizens?  You thing of games like Ultima/Star Wars Galaxies/Vanguard
where you can enjoy being a crafter, and you were worth having around in a guild.  I know I can join a guild as a social member, and maybe go out and slay internet dragons with them, but I like feeling like I'm there helping them, whether or not I'm in the room.  Think of all the games you've ever played, think of any cool side games that you've seen, why are they not in MMO's also.  I know I'm a bit of a Vanguard fanboy, but the reason I am is because of this.  You can be a crafter, or a diplomat, or an adventurer, or a combination of the three, and you are NEVER penalized for it.  AND, you can help people.  A serious raid team needs to know some good diplomats, in case the right zone buffs aren't up.  You need a crafter to turn those raid dropped mats into amazing gear.  So amazing. 

   CRAFTING SELFISHLY-I love to craft.  I love making my characters all their gear.  I love having other people giving you their crafting mats so you can level it faster.  It's a group effort that got you to X level, and now everyone enjoys the extra bag space from your new, bigger bags.  However, once you get crafting to max level, it mostly exists to give you some sort of a bonus, making it required to level.  I'm sick of finding out my bad ass recipes are BoP, or, that there are no bad ass recipes, but it gives me +5% awesomesauce passively.  What happened to the days that you knew who the few crafters were, and made sure to stay in their good graces so that you could get them to do the awesome things you needed them for. 




   Alright, that's enough for this post, I have more, so this will be a multi-part post.  But seriously, why are these things still around.  Would anyone really not play a game if these things weren't around?  Am I strange for really hating when this comes up?

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!!