Spectreblade

With a little less than two weeks before the scheduled shutdown of City of Heroes, I think it's time I made a proper farewell post. Now, this might not be my last post on these boards. I might end up seeing something worth commenting on between now and the shutdown, but this will be the post where I'll be doing my reminiscing about the game that has been such a huge part of my leisure activites during my transition from teenager to adult.

When I first heard about City of Heroes, I was still a high-school student and City of Heroes was in its very early development. The only computer I owned was a really old one that was donated from my school and was basically a hand-me-down. I had no internet access with it, and the only thing it was good for was typing up reports on for those teachers who would not accept handwritten assignments and insisted on having them typed and printed.

There were thankfully few such teachers when I was in high school, as computers were only just beginning to take their place as a fixture of the modern home. But some of the computers at school had internet access, which was where I'd first heard of City of Heroes. I'd heard of MMORPG's before, from a strategy guide for Everquest printed in Gamepro magazine. But the idea of a superhero MMO really appealed to me. I grew up watching superhero cartoons on Saturday mornings and Weekday afternoons. I watched all kinds of superhero shows with a wide range of tones, from more serious ones like Batman and Superman, to sillier ones like the Tick and Darkwing Duck. I always wanted to be able to write stories like that myself. With CoH, I'd be able to get that opportunity ... if I ever got a computer capable of running it.

But soon, I would graduate from high school and start college. My old hand-me-down computer just wasn't going to cut it anymore for schoolwork. I had to get a real computer, which I eventually did early in the first semester of college. A little over a year later, City of Heroes was officially released to the public, and I got it about a week or two later. But when I got home, I found my computer's video card was one that would not work with the game. So it'd be another few weeks before I could buy and install a new video card. But soon after, I'd created my first character; Spectreblade, the modern-day knight who wore armor possessed by the soul of its original owner, and I was off to fight crime.

I'd eventually make more upgrades to the computer to get the game to run more smoothly. I got more RAM for it. Then I upgraded my internet connection from dial-up to broadband. I'd eventually get another whole new computer. Then I switched from broadband to cable modem after my internet connection on broadband became increasingly unreliable in keeping me connected.

As my computing power grew, so did my character, at first by leveling up through gameplay, and through patch updates that took my secondary powerset of Dark Armor from an absolute joke to being a respectable defensive set. Then came the IO system, and then the Incarnate content after that.

In addition to the game itself, there's also these forums. I didn't join the forums until a year or two after I started playing the game, preferring to lurk here occasionally in my early days of hero-ing. Mostly I was too busy playing the game to get on the boards and talk about it. But I did eventually come here and started replying to threads and making my own. I wasn't really one for the major flame-wars. Usually I just put in my two influence on a topic that interested me, then followed it silently. Back when the boards still had a reputation system, the only time I'd ever gotten any rep, positive or negative, was in a thread about the reputation system where I'd mentioned that I had no rep either way and someone gave me some positive rep in response. or I'd post my RSVP in threads about in-game player-run events. While I never counted myself among the greats on these boards, I hope that my posts over the years have at least made it a slightly better place than it would have been otherwise.

In the time that has passed, I've also grown as a person. When I first started playing, I was a mere college student. I've long since graduated college, and now I'm an adult with a steady job, and my own car. And throughout all those times, there was always City of Heroes.

But just like my adolescence, City of Heroes will soon come to an end, barring any last-minute miracle or future revival. While I wish luck to those who are trying to make that happen, the time for me to bring this chapter of my life to a close is fast approaching. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do to fill the void this game is going to leave. Perhaps I might take up a less sedentary hobby and get myself some much-needed exercise, or do something else that will get me away from the computer monitor and out into the world.

But, if by some miracle City of Heroes is saved or later revived, I'll be dusting off the old armor. Until then, it's been fun!

I live in Philadelphia. Work was closed both yesterday and today. And even if it wasn't, with public transportation shut down, I wouldn't have been able to make it in anyway Driving through downtown is hard enough, even without hurricane conditions. Public and Archdiocesan schools were also closed, as was city government offices.

Mass transit is mostly back up and running, so I'll probably have work tomorrow.

Aside from work being closed, I was lucky that there was not damage to my house or loss of power. In fact, my mother commented that our backyard has gotten worse flooding from conventional storms.

While being hit with this storm does suck, for me, it's better that it hit now and not next week, when I'll be leaving for a vacation to Munich. That would've been a complete disaster for the trip I've been planning for months to be ruined by one ill-timed storm.

While my Sushi Squad character is still alive and kicking (under a different name), I might not be able to make it to any reunion event. I'm planning a trip to Munich to visit an old friend of mine sometime in late October to early November, and most likely won't have game access while I'm there.

I've added my location to the map. I'm in Philadelphia.

The character I made for this group ended up being one of only 8 characters I got to Lv. 50 in my entire time playing this game (which was shortly before launch). Her name is Magical Motoko (formerly Motoko Michi), a Willpower/War Mace Tanker.

She first became aware of her heritage after sneaking into a museum where one of her favorite superheroes, Magatama III (Rad/Rad Defender) was to fight his arch-nemesis, the dreaded Orochi Dragon (my main villain, Ninjas/Poison Mastermind). Orochi Dragon was there to steal artifacts from a medieval weapons exhibit on loan from Paragon City, the one that Spectreblade's (my main hero, Broadsword/Dark Armor Scrapper) possessed armor came from, and Spectreblade and Magatama III were there to stop him.

Eventually, Orochi Dragon spotted Motoko and tried to take her hostage. But she simply teleported out of his clutches, and in the ensuing battle fought alongside the two veteran heroes and drove off the ninja master and his Yamata Clan henchmen. The incident made the evening news, drawing the attention of the Sushi Squad, which she promptly joined.

Now, to catch you up on what she's been up to since then. After the disbanding of the Sushi Squad, she transferred to the Grae Academy, a superhero school sponsored by the Paragonian Knights, where she continued to hone both her fighting skills through the school and private training under Spectreblade as his sidekick, as well as her English (her accent isn't nearly as pronounced as it was in her Sushi Squad days). The Yamata Clan made numerous attempts to assassinate her in retaliation for the museum incident (one of which is chronicled in my AE arc, The Serpent's Revenge), but all of them failed.

Eventually, she graduated from the Grae Academy and became a full-fledged hero, taking on the name Magical Motoko upon reaching security level 50 and earning the title of "Hero of the City". A city she continues to protect along with her mentor Spectreblade.

The technical term for this kind of thing is Puffery. Just like the "World Famous Burgers" example given earlier, it's an exaggeration that no one expects to be taken seriously.

It still doesn't make the shutdown any less disappointing, though.

I'd just gotten home from work. As I usually do when I get home, I checked my e-mail, and then logged on to Facebook. That's when I saw the announcement. I spent the rest of the evening reading the various posts here and on LiveJournal about the subject. And when I got tired of that, I logged into the game on my main, and joined a Mothership raid that was starting up on Virtue to take out my frustrations on the Rikti.

Well, fellow scrappers, I haven't posted much in this section of the forums, but I will say it has been an honor to be counted as one of you, rushing straight at the most formidable foe in a pack and engaging it in mortal combat. It is an experience I will miss dearly.

I'm an anime fan, too. I'm rather indifferent to whether or not they add more "anime" elements specifically, but when it comes to costume pieces, having more choices in general is never a bad thing. As far as anime's influence on my character designs, the general concepts are mostly like western comics, but western comics don't have as much of an influence on their appearances.

Among my character roster, I tend to think of Spectreblade as the title character of his "comic book", and my villains as his "Rogues' Gallery". When I was first starting to experiment with alts, those alts were mostly villains, mainly for that purpose. Now that it's grown into full-blown altoholism, my hero/villain ratio has started to even out, as Spectreblade has made more friends in the hero community. I wouldn't exactly call their costumes "anime-style", but they tend to be more practical in nature and more closely tied to the character's concept than a simple symbol on their chest. The only real "cape and tights" outfit among them is on the Peacebringer I'm working on right now.

There are some exceptions, though. I do have a character named "Magical Motoko" among my heroes, and my main villain Orochi Dragon is a Ninja/Poison Mastermind, though he's inspired by Japanese historical culture rather than popular culture, being based on the mythical Yamata no Orochi (as a number of other anime and game villains are). But as far as their personal stories, Motoko is basically Spectreblade's sidekick, and Orochi Dragon is the arch-villain (not to mention the medieval "Knight vs. Dragon" theme).

I also have a few "power armor" heroes, which appear in both eastern and western comics.

I'm also a Lovecraft fan. My first experience with Lovecraftian themes was through Metallica's two Lovecraft-inspired songs, The Call of Ktulu from Ride the Lightning and The Thing That Should Not Be from Master of Puppets. I first heard The Call of Ktulu when I was very young, after my older brother let me listen to some of his casette tapes, and it absolutely terrified me. So much so, that I came to think "instrumental" meant "really scary song" instead of just "no lyrics" and avoided instrumental songs on casette tapes altogether until I learned otherwise.

Fast forward to a few years later, and I decided to give the song another try now that I was older and braver, and I thought it was pretty awesome. A local radio station here had what they called "Mandatory Metallica" where they played a set of three Metallica songs every night at 10:00. One time they played The Call of Ktulu, and the DJ mentioned that it was based on Lovecraft's work, which prompted me to check it out. And so began my descent into madness, which manifests itself in the Rogue Isles in the form of a Mind Control/Psionic Assault Dominator named Ilithoth.

For most Double XP Weekends, I usually try to get on a high-40's character and go for the home stretch to 50. This time, it will be Abysensis, my Villain Dark/Stone Brute (currently Lv. 46).

But on Saturday evening, I'll be taking a break from the grind and participating in the "Beat the Heat!" Imperious TF being organized by the LiveJournal CoH community with my Lv. 50 Ice/Cold Controller, Kelly Chill.

I have the Control Hybrid on my main. At first I wanted to go Core, until I noticed that the Radial branch looked like it was made specifically for me.

I'm a Broadsword/Dark Armor/Darkness Mastery Scrapper. The Radial branch adds chances to mez to all of my attacks. Specifically, the T4 grants a 70% chance to Fear, a 70% chance to Immobilize, and on foes affected by both, a 100% chance to Stun (effectively a Hold, since the target will already be Immobilized). I don't know exactly what the magnitude on those is, but they all stack with powers I already have (Cloak of Fear, Tenebrous Tentacles and Spectral Interface, and Oppressive Gloom, respectively), which I was never able to do previously, and I can now reliably mez bosses with it active.

I highly doubt that the package he sent was a cry for help to stop him. If he truly wanted to be stopped, he could have stopped himself by simply choosing not to go through with his plan.

Then again, this is a mass murderer we're talking about, which means that he by definition is insane.

But, I feel I must clarify, only in the conventional sense (non-conformity to social norms), rather than the legal defenition (mentally ill, and therefore not accountable for his own actions). To confuse the two does a disservice to the countless people who have mental and neurologial disorders and manage to integrate into normal society without incident. Calling him mentally ill would be an insult to the mentally ill.

On a Tanker or a Brute, I always take Taunt, but I don't usually get it as soon as it becomes available. I like to spend most of my early power choices on the basic attacks, and the basic armors to be able to survive the aggro I would draw by taunting.

On Brutes and Scrappers, I usually put off the "taunt aura" for a while for similar reasons, and so I'll have access to better enhancements to manage my endurance costs. Typically, I'll take the aggro aura at Lv 22, and Lv. 24 will be Taunt, or vice versa. On a Tanker, I'll usually take the aggro aura sooner since the attacks I'd otherwise take unlock more slowly.

There was a point right after Inherent Fitness came out where I took Confront on my namesake main Scrapper, but I later respecced out of it. If I had a spare power choice on a Scrapper, I'd consider taking it, but it's not a very high priority.

And on AT's that don't get taunts in their Primary or Secondary, I've never gone into the Presence pool for Challenge or Provoke, since drawing aggro isn't the purpose of those AT's, and is usually a hinderance to their purpose. Although the Placate power they're planning to replace Challenge with is something I might take on my Ninjas/Poison MM for concept reasons. I'm torn between that or the AoE Placate they plan on adding to Concealment. My MM already has Stealth, though having to devote two additional power choices to it and another Concealment power to unlock it is making that option less attractive.

But one thing I like to do on my characters that have Taunt powers is to create a few keybinds so they'll say something in local chat when they use the power. I use the taunt binds sparingly, since I don't want to annoy my teammates by spamming the same few phrases all the time like some fighting game character. But occasionally, I'll hit one of them every now and then instead of the basic non-chatbinded Taunt to spice up the action.

Usually, they are in-character taunts. My main had knightly phrases like "Have at you, $target!" during the brief time he had Confront, for example. But coming up with good taunts is hard. The best put-downs are ones tailored to the target, which I can't really do in the context of stock phrases.

But no matter the character, one of their taunt binds will always be "Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!"

This is truly sickening. My thoughts go out to those who have died at the hands of this killer, and the families they leave behind.

I can't think of much to say that hasn't already been said. It must have been horrible to be in that theater when it happened, coming to see a story about a comic hero, suddenly finding themselves in need of a real hero.

Perhaps they were even thinking the same thing Samuraiko was.

To quote ParagonWiki:

One question. If someone's being affected by the blackout, wouldn't that make them unable to use their computer to post to this thread, or even see it?

Well, there are mobile devices, though, or posting after their power is restored.

But anyway, I'm in Philadelphia, and I've only had to deal with the excessive heat on my way to and from work so far. But being without power in triple-digit temperatures sounds really rough. Anyone in that situation has my sympathy.

Yeah, I have no clue why the Magisterium trial is the only one where we didn't get an official overview like we did for the others. Every single one of the previous trials had theirs posted before they went live, so why not this one?

This is an idea I could get behind. I've got a few characters whose concepts would benefit from an alternate defeat animation. I've got Bluebolt Psi a robotic drone who could explode. I've got Armorbound, an animated suit of armor that could fall apart.

I've even got Amorphous Man, a Spines/Regen Scrapper, a T-1000-esque shapeshifter who could be splattered into a puddle on the floor when defeated.

Or even combine several of this thread's suggestions for a powered armor character. The armor shell gets blown to pieces, leaving the character on his/her knees in his/her underwear, ala Arthur of Ghosts n' Goblins or Samus from Metroid.

Although with some of them, you'd also need a matching "get back up" animation (like Armorbound or Amorphous Man reforming himself), which can be a problem, especially for the "blown to pieces" ones.

And come to think of it, a lot of those might be seen as even more embarrasing than a simple faceplant. Especially the powered armor variant, which would also require you to imagine what your character wears under their armor and create a separate costume for it.

I can also easily imagine some overconfident player dismissing them via the same logic they dismiss self-rezzes with. "Why should I use death emotes? I'm never going to die!"

It would need a lot of work, but if they ever do it, I'll definitely use some of them if they fit my characters.

I used to do some casual arena PvP. The Virtue server used to have their "Fight Night at the Golden Giza", which I was a regular at. I didn't really like zone PvP, though. A competitive but unstructured environment like that tends to bring out the worst in people. At least in the arena you don't have to worry about getting ganged up on.

But these days I rarely PvP anymore, and the I13 changes had a lot to do with that. What they were trying to accomplish with the changes they made was to make it so that any powerset could have a fair chance at winning a fight, and that there would be no such thing as a "lol-build", as they put it. But their method of doing that was to make all AT's and powersets the same, things like giving Psionic resistance to sets that lacked it in PvE, which took away Psionic's main selling point as a damage type, and basically defeating the purpose of having different powersets to choose from.

That change drove a lot of would-be opponents away, and those that remain are the type that care more about trash-talking and ganking people than fighting them.

But that said, I'm still in the camp that supports fixing PvP. I have quite a few ideas on how I would improve it if it were up to me, but at the very least, having a "classic mode" as an option for arena matches would be a good start.

I was in the middle of the last mission of Sister Solaris' arc, having just reached the part with the Minotaurs and Cyclopses (Cyclopi?). The Cimerora crew and I were kicking major butt until the crash.

And FYI, I was on Virtue.