tpull

Extra-long 4th of July Task Force Entry!

Entry 60

The next day, we log on early and go to do the Calvin Scott Task Force, before it goes away. Bice is on again, so he comes along, ‘natch. Another Peacebringer, Khel Orbit joins, as does Lavita the Blaster, and a Blaster who shall remain nameless. The Nameless Blaster keeps asking for a Tank, despite my telling him DC will tank. Then he calls out for a healer?!? "Ahem. I AM a healer..." Mizz Storm joins us as a Defender, and our last member is Lord Miz, who turns out to be a Tank. An eight-person team!

I tell Mizz Storm my primary heal is DC, and ask if she can have Lord Miz as her primary. She says she can cover everybody. Really. On our way to the first mission, the Nameless Blaster tells me I should take the Fitness line. DC is already calling me on the phone, can't stand this guy. We're laughing at the idea that he's telling me what powers to take, but I know DC has little patience for incompetent people. On my way back to the contact for our next mission, the Blaster asks if we can hurry it up. This is gonna be a long Task Force...

It takes a couple missions before I spot our name. We are Task Force Hope! How appropriate. I had told DC this would be more of a challenge for us, because we went straight from being at the top-tier levels for a TF down to the bottom rungs. The Calvin Scott TF is for levels 30-35, and I'm only 30, DC is 31. We were even, but he kept running around, "just getting badges," and "setting us up" for getting the story arcs that give us other badges. Except I find out later he also went and did all the NPC Store missions from Brickstown and Founder's Falls. Only the necessary missions, hmm? I remind myself to refresh his memory of the pact he decided to announce himself, that he wouldn't play so much without me. But later, not now.

Needless to say, on an eight-person mission, Mizz Storm couldn't cover everybody. DC jumps on a catwalk, and I follow to keep him alive. I realize there's no way I can jump down to heal others and get back in time for DC, but we're dropping slowly, one by one. I call for a retreat, and stay until I see DC withdraw. Not enough, when he's out of my sight, DC takes a dirt nap. I regroup with the three of us alive, and we hold our own until the small group attacking us is down and out. I start passing out Awakens and rezzing people, and I repeat, yet again, for people to follow the lead of Diamond Cut. "He's faster and the best at navigating the map," I tell them. They all fall into line this time. Funny what a little debt does to people. I love a Task Force!

The Nameless Blaster keeps running back when he's hit, way out of the range of the others. Every other time I got to heal him, I have to backtrack a little to catch him in my heal. I don't say anything, since it's not costing anyone his or her life yet. We keep going up against a ton of purples, though, so there are a couple more deaths. The lovely Mizz Storm, who declared she was all the healer we needed, quits without warning, even though one of the first things I always say before we start a TF is," The only thing I ask is that you stay, do not quit until the end of a mission." Meh. It's fine, really, her statement kind of tipped me off, so I half-expected it. She wasn't bad, just had unrealistic expectations. But often those people do not stick it out with you.

Whenever I have to consider kicking someone from the team (a rarity), I send a tell to all members, to ask for their vote, yea or nay. It has to be unanimous. I see some warning signs for the Nameless blaster, so I do a pre-check with DC in case we get in a rush later, partly because I already know what his answer will be. "Gone." I stop there, though, because I want to give him one last chance. It works well, as he seems to have gotten it out of his system. He's not whining about our other healer being gone, he's not bothering others to speed up, and he's not offering his sage advice on how to play other people's characters. He must have gotten it all out of his system, because now he's mostly just playing. He's just not going to be on a team with us in the future, that's all. That doesn't happen very often, and I'm glad to still be able to say that in this game.

Throughout the various missions, I get to be more active, since I'm the healer. I'm liking the character more and more as I provide the keys to survival for most of these large groups. I'm also revising my slotting plans to figure out the best ways to buff others, rather than slotting my attacks. Oh, I'll still slot my attacks, make no mistake, but I'm starting to wonder how much more effective I can make Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost, when I get that power. Absorb Pain is coming in handy a few times, so once again I'm glad I chose the power. It's not used every mission, but when it does, it truly makes the difference. The Nameless Blaster for some reason gets it into his head that it would be a good idea to sidekick me. I tell him no, but he offers anyway. I decline the offer and say no again, and he replies, "whatever." I wanted to make this as big a challenge as I could for me, having a full team to heal while I was the lowest-level member. The only time I died was against the AV, and a sidekick definitely would not have helped any there. I'm not gonna kick the guy, but he's finally starting to annoy me almost as much as he annoys DC. DC sends a tell that he never gets invited to one of our shindigs again. I laugh, but I have to agree.

I think everyone's debt is gone by the time we get to the last couple missions, and disaster strikes. Brickstown is lag city, and my computer freezes as I go to zone into Crey's Folly. I manage to log back on, but I can't be leader anymore, which means I can't read the text, which wouldn't be so bad except this TF is going away! Argh! I do love my flavor text. Why couldn't this happen on any other TF? The good news is DC is the leader, so I don't have to worry about someone messing things up. I log back on, and he knows he can't transfer it back to me, but he reminds me I can read the text under the "i" on our map/navigation menu. It's not the same, but I take what I can get. He also sends me on the courier mission to Azuria, so I get to read that text. He's such a good friend! I figure I'll just ransack the boards for the rest of the story later.

The AV in the final mission takes a ton of us down, and we use our Awakens and rez to try again, but we face-plant another time. Lord Miz points out he's the only one who hasn't died, and he's the Tank. I joke about everybody letting him die, and he cracks back about the heals are going to stop, while I send an emote about whistling nonchalantly. It's a pretty good group, overall! I ask everyone down to go to the hospital, and by the time we get back, the AV is fully healed. We gather together and I buff the heck out of everyone (not as nasty s it sounds). Clear Mind is a savior here, and to think I was considering a Respec out of it. "Blasphemy," Khel Orbit says. I say, "Ok, let's rock," and we take the guy down with no more casualties, in a well-coordinated attack that handles him quite nicely. Somewhere in there, I level up to 31! I petition the Devs for a souvenir, since I read you have to in order to get it for the Calvin Scott TF.

Entry 59

Diamond Cut calls me and says there's an anniversary Respec for all of us. I get so excited, I run in and Respec Ultra Meltdown, but I do it almost entirely wrong. I keep the Fitness line, and ditch Hasten and Super Speed. Groan, not again! I realize what I've done as soon as I hit finish. I'm broke, with no contact yet from whom I can get SOs for Stamina. And S Speed and Hasten at least gave me a little defense, and now I have none. I took Fly again, which I love for this character, but it's a little slow. The slotting on Electric Fence is gone, it was fun for a while, but not quite efficient enough to keep. Instead, I 6-slot Power Bolt, Power Blast, Sniper Shot, and Havoc Punch. This way I can one-shot a white-con with my snipe, run in to take out another with my Punch, and then take out whatever third enemy is there. It's nice to have my Bolt back, but without Hasten, my sense of timing is off, and I keep pressing for my Blast before it cycles. And with no speed, it takes a looong time for me to get close enough to my next foe to face-plant him with Havoc Punch. Sigh. Gonna have to take Hasten and S Speed for my next two levels. Hey Devs, I need another Respec...

I get chain-held a couple times on a Banished Pantheon mission. It's timed, so I stop to grab help. On the Team Seek menu, I invite a Tank, but he declines. I'm never sure why people have team seek on if they turn down the invite without a word. Half the time I send a tell even to the people on Team Seek, but I don't want to pester him with questions, so I resolve to finish this myself. I'm up against yellow-con Shamans and orange-con Totems, which would be fine if I wasn't down to a sliver of health, and then I miss three times in a row, sometimes with Aim and/or Build Up going. Grr. When I'm through getting Martial Master and CRM to 50, I'm gonna have to find a partner for Ultra Meltdown. I resign myself to switching my mission slider difficulty back down to the lowest setting.

Part of it is my character concept, I know. I refuse to have Stealth with this guy, and I don't quite have enough room in the build for Fitness and Fighting, so Tough is out. Half the time, I'm dying from villains at range anyway. Level 27 seems to be the toughest part of leveling a Blaster for me, personally, as far as I can remember. Last time I died so much was when Martial Master was hunting solo around level 17. I have a little sympathy for some of the board-talk, since the mob can shoot their regular attacks just as far I can shoot my snipe attack. I figure I need to group more, or at least solo down at the lower difficulty level. I have actually been looking for teammates to group with the entire time, but it's been a dry well for this level, and one above and below it, whenever I'm online. That happens occasionally. One thing I notice, CRM gets blind invites four or five times a night, Martial Master gets two to four,... my Blaster never gets any. Period. I wonder what that means?

Entry 58

On again the very next night, as Diamond Cut and CRM tear a path of destruction through Paragon City, arresting the ne'er-do-wells nonstop. Okay, we stopped for dinner, but then we went right back to work again! We clear the missions for my Contact so I can buy other SOs, for things like running speed. "I am so stupid," I tell DC. "I bought Stamina SOs. He laughs at me, since he knows this is the first character I've been successful without having the Fitness line. I actually bought them out of habit! For this reason, DC still has influence, but I go broke.

There's a timed mission, but I ask DC if he wants to test himself and do another whole mission first, then try to beat the clock on the timed. I used to do it with Martial Master to spice things up when I was solo. He agrees, and we have no problems. Later he ends up taking two missions and they both end up timed. On our way to the second mission, I say I'm taking bets on how much time we'll have left over when we finish it. DC says we'll probably only need twenty minutes, probably, and he's about right, but I think we finish it closer to fifteen minutes. We're coasting through Invincible missions and wondering if this is really the highest notch they could give us. I mention maybe we should stop doing missions and just go find some purples for a challenge. Instead, he starts herding a little in a Sky Raider mission full of orange- and red-cons. He races around the top deck, gathering everyone in the room as they whomp on him. I jump in as his health bar goes to red, and start taking collateral fire myself. I start alternating heals and buffs, and drag out Absorb Pain a time or two, even. We finish off all of them, at full health. He speeds away, asking me how I liked that. That was fun! Let's do it again! It was even more fun since he didn't tell me he was going to do it, so I had to notice his change-up in tactics and react fast to keep him alive. He's lucky I'm his friend and want to keep him alive, if I was of lesser integrity, he would have been face-planted so fast his costume would have skid marks. Maybe we can find a squishy to invite along that will give me more fun things to do. As an Invul Scrapper, my heals seem superfluous much of the time. But I know he's glad I'm there when it counts, it's an awesome blast to be playing the game with my best friend.

We both level up to 29, and I go put my final slot in Healing Aura, and another so I have Hasten three-slotted. I'm loving being able to do a build without feeling the absence of the Fitness line. DC is going faster than ever, knowing the maps to the missions like the back of his hand. I'm terrible with maps, and this is my first MMORG, while he's done a few before this, so I don't think he realizes exactly how much he rules the game already. He knows he owns it, so to speak, but from my observation point, he's moving even faster than he did as Red Haven, which makes me wonder if Regen is really better than the Invul I'm watching now. At least with a healer on hand to keep him out of serious danger. We play until we're beat, and he gets to go to sleep, but I still have to type this dren up for the Journal while it's fresh in my mind...

Okay, Red is a big stinker! We have a long-running joke about this, as we go back and forth telling the other he should get Recall Friend. It seems not a mission goes by without one of us saying, "If you had TP, I'd be there already." We rib each other about it daily.

In all seriousness, he's the first to missions most of the time, and he navigates maps better than anyone else I've ever seen. He is gonna be so impatient when my new character has to tank nex!

Entry 57

Diamond Cut finally has a new computer that works, and we head straight into the Moonfire Task Force, firing on all cylinders. We end up with a team of seven, and four of us have heals! The Blaster dies. I was heading to heal him, but I was blocked by something. Probably the head of another healer! I don't know what everybody was doing, but I know he was in the front, and he was closer to the back for the rest of the evening. I was just embarrassed we had four healers, and somebody still died. As the night progresses, I make a couple jokes about how there aren't enough healers on the team. One thing I notice, the more I use Super Speed, the more I like Super Jump!

One player drops at the end of Task Force Starstruck, but we just grab a Blaster and head right into the Ernesto Hess TF next. We are now Task Force Paradox! Funny coincidence, I had been running around a night or two back thinking how cool it would be if I could knock out the Council's radar stations, so I thought the missions were neat, and the maps were also refreshing to go through. One player who had obviously done the TF before kept asking if we wanted to TP to the end to just take out the boss and move on. I guess I can understand that type of thinking, but for the most part I kept the team together, because it was my first time through these and I wanted to see as much as I could. Also, experience from previous task forces tells me that every time the team splits up, someone ends up taking a dirt nap. Diamond Cut laughs at that, but most of us bite the big one as two of our number are somewhere else. In another mission, the subject comes up again as the same person rushes to the end of the mission. We let it go this time, but we're also fighting a mob, so Diamond Cut tells her to TP everyone else first, leave me and him for last. So she tries to TP me first. I'm glad we can refuse those now. I repeat that I go next to last and DC goes last, and it gets done right this time. On the way out of another mission, I forget where we are exactly, jump over a wall, and right into some Council guards who are much, much higher in level than I am! Ouch!

This is a mixed feeling Task Force (Paradox indeed!), because I know we had a couple "veterans" in the group besides DC and I, but every time I let things play out when someone was down, I had to step in and ask for someone to get to safety and TP the corpse to safety. If I had been barking orders as soon as it happened, we could have had them rezzed and back in the battle faster, but I wanted to give the team some rope. After another dirt nap of mine, I relayed the order of TPs to take place so that each of us could rez another in turn. Instead, I'm one of the last teleported, and instead of a rez, I get an Awaken, which delays my ability to Rez. Overall not too many deaths, and we got the job done, but it was nowhere near the flawless Synapse TF from earlier. There's also a trick at the end of Hess that results in one last death for me and DC, but after two seconds of thinking about it, I figure an easy way I could have avoided it. The debt doesn't last too long anyway. We must have played for almost six hours that night. We were so beat. But we beat the deadline for doing the Hess TF, since we knew it was going away as soon as Issue 4 came out (Note: at the time I had this mixed up with Calvin Scott's TF. The Hess TF is stilll there, don't get scared!). This seems different from other MMORGs, as far as I can tell. A good group mission, but it's only here for a small amount of time, and then it goes away forever? Just to advance the in-game story? Interesting! I think I like it, but all my poor alts who aren't high enough to do it...

tastywheat, yes, that is one of the largest management problems for the combination of MA and SR. On my second MA/SR so far, he often takes out two bad guys, and for the third guy he has to wait for his END to build back up to launch another hit. I usually go through my inspirations whther I "need" them at the moment or not, just to clear room for CABs until I feel I have enough of a reserve supply.

You might consider switching out one END reducer for a damage, if some of your foes have only a few slivers of life left each time. Sometimes just knocking them out sooner means the fight's over and you're not burning END.

One other thing I do at the lower levels is turn off Focused Fighting when my opponent only has one or two hits of life left. And I'm always turning off Sprint as soon as I get next to the mob.

You can see from Roger's build, he added END reducers in his attacks, and that's one of the differences with MA/SR builds from most other Scrapper builds. Most of them won't have END reducers unless they want to have a marathon build.

The higher levels are much easier. Martial Master can go non-stop with Stamina and Conserve Power, assuming he doesn't have to punch Elude, without any END reducers in his attacks.

Entry 56

I go to hunt some Family and get ambushed. Oh joy, we've reached that stage of the game. I'm not sure how the mission difficulty slider affects things such as ambushes. I've got my back turned engaging a different group, so I am defeated in short order. How embarrassing! Nobody higher than a white-con. After I do some street-thrashing, I go back to the contact and get a hunt Sky Raider mission next. Ambush again, only this time there's five of them, and yellow-cons mixed in. Two Family, but five Sky Raiders? There's another hero nearby, I may have picked up his ambushers as well. I use all my green candy, and take out all but one, and start running. Man their range is good! I manage to get a snipe off and paste him, with maybe five hit points left. I'm guessing Health is actually making a small contribution to that. On the way to get some Thorns, I pass through an open area in Talos to the north. Oh, it's where the arena is going to be! I hadn't traveled over it before now.

A lot of my habits from being a Scrapper are still heavily ingrained in me, so I do tend to bite off more than I can chew with Ultra Meltdown. I do so well taking out a solitary orange-conning Devouring Earth, I get greedy and go for a snipe on one in a group. I get held and sent to the hospital in short order. I simply have to relearn to fire and retreat, or at least go in with some backup. When I played Ultra months ago, I had just gotten into a good pattern of knowing exactly when to fall back a few paces, and when to run screaming like a little schoolgirl. Now I have to start those fighting habits again when I'm solo. I try to be a little safer in Terra Volta, after losing half my health in attacking a pack of Sky Raiders. I start picking off Freaks, and I use Hover as well. But I get caught. Stupid power lines! I can't go higher, and they get me again.

Back from the hospital, I'm wondering how the Raiders can peg me when I've already sniped and moved away. I remember sometimes the shots just follow you around a corner, but I'm around two corners by the time their attacks catch up with me, and one of them never ceases to knock me on my back. I start to be a little safer, though. Then, Godcry sends me a tell about a mission in Striga at level 29. With the way I'm performing right now, at level 26 with level 25 enhancements, I could use a good team, so I join in. I only hit my gratz hotkey by mistake twice. I'm getting better! We do a couple of good missions, and I level up to 27 finally. Almost get rid of all my debt as well, and I was near the debt cap for my level. As we finish the second mission, I tell them I'm going to go buy all the level 30 SOs I can get my armored mitts on. A couple people talk about how good the team was, and our healer mentions it's the best team she's been on for a while. A couple people say they're adding everyone to their friends list. Everyone!

I hit the science store in Talos, knowing I've yet to get either of the two possible Science contacts that can get me the other SOs. I'm going to have to load up on what I can. Tonight my goal was to burn through as many of my piddly ‘hunt x' missions as I could to be introduced to one of those contacts. I'm not there yet. I run out of Influence anyway, but I do manage to get Accuracies and Recharges everywhere I need, and Damage into my Sniper Blast, Energy Torrent, and Havoc Punch. Electric Fence and Charged Brawl get the short end of the stick. It's probably a good thing I had so much debt, it gave me the opportunity to slow down and earn more Influence, which I knew I'd need. Now it's time to genuinely test out my Respec build, since I'm halfway-decently outfitted, so to speak.

I do a hunt 30 Thorns mission, swimming out to the northern islands of Talos. I can one-shot white-cons with my snipe again, and with Aim and Build Up, I can almost take out a Mage. If I can get my last enhancement from a 27 Damage to a 30, I think I can one-shot him too. I get all 30, but decide to tackle a group of seven white-cons. I snipe one, take out another, then have to run off the mountain. This gives me time to snipe again, take out a second with my Sands of Mu, and use my final candy Respite. The remaining three I take out, but I have to use a CAB to keep up, since my Stamina is five-slotted with old DOs. Much better overall!

I do happen to have one character on each server, I may have to call for a vote on which character I dedicate myself to next. At some point, I promise to list all my characters and which servers they are on. How's that sound?

Entry 55

Trying to do Circle of Thorn missions solo as Ultra Meltdown is hard! I even activate my temporary power that is supposed to protect me from harm, but the ghostly spirits attacking me send me to the hospital easily enough, even with it on. Does this thing work? Team seek does no good, there's no one available, except a level 29 scrapper who joins and then says there won't be any xp in it for him. I tell him to never mind, I'll find someone else willing to help. I can't be upset at that, if he doesn't want to Exemplar or something, I don't want to hold him back. As a hero, if someone is actually asking for my help, I try to do it if I can, even if the xp is crummy. But I know I have already cast myself as an ambassador for the game of sorts, while others are in it for maximum xp gain. Plus, I actually do try to do what a super-hero would do, so I'm thinking if Robin went and asked Superman for help, Supes would jump in no matter how much easier it was for him. I am so corny sometimes... Nobody else answers my call. I stock up on candy and try again. Yup, the temp power doesn't work at all here. I retreat before I die. Am I going to have to lower the difficulty setting so soon after I just raised it?

I snap up a guy from the recent Respec, Sub - Zero, and send a tell to Zeus Prime, asking for help, since time is so low. We head on in and start tackling things, and I notice Sub clicks on a blinkie. I've got one temp power from the mission, and I know there are two, so I ask him not to click on the blinkies, since I would like to get the powers. He types in, "lol," and that's it. When he clicks on another, I send him a tell, and say seriously please don't click. He says he already got a power, and I type, "thanks for nothing," in my normal sarcastic way. He takes offense and quits the team. What I did not know was that he got the temp power in the first blinkie he clicked, and he knew I had the second one, so that was why he kept clicking on the rest, he knew it didn't matter anymore. But when I made my comment, he took it seriously and got offended. I track him down after the mission and talk to him about it, because he was so cool on our previous Respec, I'm wondering what is up. We get straight that I had asked him too late, he already had the power, and I understand he took my comment a little too seriously, and we make up. I‘m feeling good about this, since often someone will do something and immediately put you on an ignore list. Every so often we have to remind ourselves that this is just a game, and it's really better to make friends, rather than walk away pissed off because someone did something like "steal" one of "your" virtual powers, or take a comment too personally. Sub - Zero was willing to talk and to listen, and I was willing to apologize for my part and ask if he still wanted to hang, and that little bit of effort keeps a cool friend, as opposed to doing the /ignore bit, which is really easy. Makes me think we should have an additional message when we go to do it, that says, "Are you sure? This is just a game,' or something like that. After we make up and talk about the game and life and stuff, I tell him it's cool that he was willing to talk rather than walk away. Then I type in, "Will u marry me? Rofl" We start laughing and part on good terms.

Oh, the mission? Zeus Prime and I each got knocked out once (did the Devs push the ‘extra squishy' button on their control pad when they made us?), but we found the rest of the artifacts and destroyed the two altars, and took out the boss. Then we took down the goons around him and made a circuit of the cavern, taking down everyone we found. We were tackling the final bad guy in the cavern when the clock ran down. Mission failure! Oh, but we were soooo close. That was exciting. It still gave me 500 xp and took off 500 debt, so I'm thinking I only lost out on maybe 1000 xp.

I go on the warpath to get the most out of my Sands of Mu, and notice that quite often, the attacks occur, but the animation doesn't. This happens with both Charged Brawl and Bone Smasher a lot too, where it looks like I'm just standing still in front of an enemy, and they get knocked to the ground or convulse in an electric seizure. Hey, it would be neat if we could just make them twitch like that with our minds. I get shoved around by citizens on the street as I line up for a snipe on a Consigliere. I don't care if I don't have status protection, and I know I can't alpha strike him yet. I'm working on a one-two punch attack that I can still carry out, even if he's surrounded by goons. It works this time! I may not have SR, or the hit points of a Scrapper, but I can still take calculated risks. It's part of the fun I have when solo, to really test how far my character can handle a situation at each level of development. Even a blue-conning Consigliere can clean my clock, so that one's always a risk.

A Mr. Untouchable is hunting wolves and vamps for the badges in Striga, and asks if I will help. He is a level 21 Tank, and he knows how to herd. As a matter of fact, he herds better than anyone else I've seen in the game. It's obvious from his playstyle that he has a higher-level character, and he confirms that. I'm not sure why there has been such a huge outcry against Knockback on the boards, I use it to great effect here. Energy Torrent's Knockback works great with Tanks! He Taunts, and once he sets them up, I bowl them over like tenpins, catching most of them in my blast radius. He's running around to herd different groups anyway, and he's a lower level, so it's not like he's going to do much damage before I knock them away. It's a match made in heaven. I can understand why in larger groups this might be a problem, but with groups of three or less, it's very beneficial. I wonder why nobody ever mentions that on the boards.

After some good hunting, we try to go after the Maestro, and I sidekick him. We get to the AV in the base, and I chew up all of my candy, including four CABs. No good. We end up watching as he slowly regenerates, because we just can't do quite enough to take him out. I recruit some people, and we get Green Nomad, Cosmic Hunter, and Baby Sitter to come on over and lend a helping hand. Everybody's really great, and we joke as we play. Maestro doesn't stand a chance now.

Another grief on the boards that I think I have concluded is false is the melee attacks. The Devs knew what they were doing with melee attacks for Blasters. If I take out one guy with an alpha strike, just one or two remaining guys can't get to within melee distance of me. When that happens, you've got to be able to deal with them. It's especially useful when solo. I'd rather have a powerful attack or two up close to finish these guys off than have everything invested in range, which doesn't help by the time you're in your mid-20s, unless you slot range enhancements in your attacks. I end up in melee more often than I want, so I'm going to say that the Devs have planned the powers out relatively well, although there really should have been at least one little defense power somewhere in the primary or secondary sets. If I could change one thing about Blasters, it would be to give them some type of force field or energy absorption before the Epic pools, I could come up with a different one for each power set.

Entry 54

Later in the night I log on solo, and get a hunting mission. If there's anything that's grind at this point, it's the hunt 30 missions. I go after some Freaks, and they're trying to jack a car. Hey, I just stopped other Freaks from taking that same car a couple minutes ago! On my third circuit back, sure enough, two more are there. They must really want that car. My fourth trip around, and five (!) of them are there. Aim + Build Up and an Energy Torrent later, they're all sleeping soundly. I get a blind invite and accept just to see what happens. Nothing. I type in, "Why are you issuing me a blind invite and not even welcoming me to the team?" No response. I quit. That was fun. Weirdos.

My slotting is a little off, but workable. By this I mean I can use Electric Fence all the time with one END reducer in it, but my Power Blast really could use at least one more slot. I slotted my Sniper Blast and Energy Torrent at the expense of the other attacks, and it makes the others not quite worth using most of the time. Overall, my squishy is dying about as often as I used to, so the Respec works. My hotkeys are a work in progress, as after I use Aim + Build Up, I tend to hit a wrong key that I have rigged to say gratz, instead of my snipe. I'm also twitching to use another range attack, but my Power Bolt is gone. I may have to bring it back after all. It doesn't feel like a complete complement of range tools without at least three ranged attacks. Electric Fence doesn't quite fit.

I get a tell asking to join a team, so I give it chance. The team lead is not too coordinated. We've got a mission we're practically standing on in Striga, but he heads to his IP contact to get another one. When some players quit, he wants us to wait until he gets two more to join. I could have done a whole mission in the time we're standing around. The healer of the team has Assault, but no Fortitude. They launch the fight without buffing the team. One casts Accelerate Metabolism, but doesn't catch us all in it. And one Tank just sort of... stands there. The AM wears off, but the healer doesn't use RA. Throughout all of this, no one dies, so I hang around out of a morbid sense of curiosity. Can this team make it through without a death? The other Tank is spamming his taunt more than any I have ever heard before now, so it might work. Plus, we're going up against super-slow enemies like Totems.

They don't seem to concentrate on the Shamans first, as I'm used to. I start picking them off myself, at the risk of getting their attention. A red-conning Totem sets his sites on me, and I back up. The healer, who has been hanging back with me the whole time while I snipe, doesn't follow me. Instead, he types in, "Can't heal when you run." If he'd gone after me for two seconds, he could have stopped my health from going red, instead of typing to chastise me. I know from playing both a healer and a blaster, sometimes a blaster simply has to run. I also know from being CRM that a good healer can chase a member every now and then if the rest of the group is doing okay, I don't let teammates die just because they get a little separated from the herd when a red-con goes after him.

One of the tanks and someone else dies in a fight that takes forever. I notice on one mob, the scrapper of the team actually hangs back more than I do. Weird. Everyone is still not focusing on the Shamans, and their effects prevent me from sniping. So, I buckle down and turn into a blapper, running up to them and going all out until they're down. It's amazing how long it takes seven people to take down a mob. RA and AM just aren't coming up. It's only because we have two tanks that people aren't dropping left and right. The tank runs in and taunts an attack on us that ruins my snipe, so I run into melee again and proceed to take out about five Shamans, while everyone else flops around like fish on the ground or hits the Totems. The tank taunts from right in the middle of our group, inviting a mass attack from the next Totem. This is just utterly amazing by now. It's like watching a car crash, you can't turn away no matter how horrible it is. And despite it all, only two deaths. In the final mob, I tackle each Shaman in turn, keeping my eye on a flopping tank, who is still targeted on a Totem. Ehh, I should have stayed solo. The group breaks up as soon as we're done, and I go arrest Dr. Goldsmith solo, in less than fifteen minutes. Well, considering last night's teams were so good, and today's earlier teams were decent, I was due for a so-so experience, wasn't I?

Entry 53

I keybind Aim and Build Up for the first time, so Ultra Meltdown can make room for all his attacks, and head to the store to load up on enhancements. Along the way, I pick on some poor Outcasts in Steel Canyon to try and break my habit of hitting a certain number for a ranged attack, since I don't have Power Bolt any more. After I'm loaded with enhancements, I simply have to test out how it works, and get a feel for things. Ugh, is Hover slow without its slots. Just my luck, I'm in that awkward place where my enhancements are all 25, I'm at level 26, and I don't have enough cash to buff up and still afford level 30 enhancements when I get to 27. This might be a bit of a grind. I'm enjoying the solo time as well, with my character though. I go Tsoo hunting, and find I run through a lot of END, but everything seems to work well. Then I go after some Ink Men, not realizing there's a yellow-con Underboss right there. Hospital. Oh, for any kind of status protection!

I'm tired, so it takes me a little longer to get everything lined up right, but after running for a bunch of courier and street-hunting missions, I finally get an indoor mission. I stop sniping and realize I can save time by using a couple melee attacks on the lower-ranked minions. I also realize I have Power Burst back, and I haven't even been using it. The only thing I'm missing in this build is my Power Bolt, and the melee attacks definitely do more damage than that. Even this is not a fair test, as the mission is old, and the boss cons blue to me. But since I'm rubbing my eyes, I figure I better quit while I'm ahead. Maybe this binge-playing is trying to make up for nearly a week of inaction?

I put together a team the next day for Ultra Meltdown, and after a while the team meshed so well, I made a visit to the people who spread vicious rumors about you. Got my difficulty slided up a notch. Ultra Meltdown seems to have a few contacts with old missions, so anything to make it more challenging. I level up a couple times with two different teams, but nobody says grats. Sometimes it's because people don't notice it, others it's because you're in the middle of the fight. It's strange how it's become such a part of the game, that it's like when you sneeze and the person next to you doesn't say "bless you." At this stage, I'm actually sensitive to the etiquette in other ways as well. Half of my team members throughout the day drop without saying a word. I'm not sure if that's because I'm in the mid-20s, or if this is common at all levels now. Others take the opportunity to say goodbye when they get knocked out, and I can relate to that. There's finally a break in the action, and you realize it's going to take a while to get back to the mission, and it's probably better if you log and go breathe some outside air.

I help a level 19 Controller get rid of her Vahz wasting disease. She's really appreciative, and I tell her all the xp-obsessive people have already left the team, as one person complained about a mission being too low and left. I had a different plan today for Ultra. Today was a day of beneficence, and if a lower-level player needed help, I would ask to Exemplar to him or her. Debt gets worked off faster, and I can earn a bit more Influence to buy Enhancements, and it helps out lower level players. No matter what you choose to do in this game, you just can't lose!

I was originally going to do this 'community service" with characters I got to level 50, but it works with pretty much any character that's high enough to Exemplar in the first place. I figure these levels are where a lot of people are obsessed with xp per hour, so if I spend a couple hours helping others, those people will pass me by, and I'll find other people who aren't so anxious. by this point, I know I'm going to level up fairly well, especially with my other characters the hardest time I'm having is with this Blaster, as a matter of fact, and I suspect that's mostly due to going solo and not getting my build quite the way I want it.

Entry 52

Sometimes I wish I lived in a different time zone, if only because there are some fun players on after midnight. After a few days in real life of not being able to play, I log on Ultra Meltdown for some fun. I get snapped up fairly quick for the Sister Psynapse Task Force, and it's a weird one. We start with eight players, and one has to leave. Business as usual. Then another disappears, and the leader drops without a word after halfway through. The five left are doing well, but our fifth suddenly says this sucks and leaves. Huh? Well okay, but the remaining four of us rocket through at a much faster pace. One guy logs back on when we're on our way to the final mission, but I guess our new team leader kicks him, because he sends a tell to the leader saying we stink. Why he thought he could log after being gone for more than half a TF without a word to anyone and log back on, I have no idea. At the end, Clamor goes down fairly easily, and I get to add another TF to my belt notch.

After a time logged off (real life keeps intruding, grr...), I go back in! Invite comes to do a Respec, and it's done properly. Meaning my team seek is not on, but I get a tell sent, rather than a blind invite. If I'm free for a Respec or a TF and they send a tell, I'll usually join in, it's a hint that they know proper etiquette. I'm a sucker for etiquette. I die a couple times, but overall our tank Lip Gloss keeps us safe. A Five-person team, me the blaster, Sub - Zero the controller, and two scrappers, Bill Smith and Paragon Hunter. Poor Sub - Zero, he has Super speed and nothing else, just like my healer CRM, it takes him forever to get to the Terra Volta reactor. I die once in there, and use my last Awaken. Sub - Zero gets pegged, and we're in the middle of a fight, so he goes to the hospital. Gah! The final wave is coming as Sub - Zero makes his way back. We leave one Sky Skiff up and let Lip Gloss run around taunting it until he gets back in the reactor, it doesn't take him too long after we've whittled the enemy down to one anyway.

Lip Gloss has to run, and the rest of us are chatting about various things when someone spots that Lucas is up. Well, we can't log without going after him now, can we? Don't look at your watch... I die a couple times and realize I should snipe only, anything else is certain death. For this much debt, there better be a badge in it! Yes, Ultra gets the second Devilfish badge, after CRM. Now if only Flashback can get here soon, so Martial Master can go back and join in the fun.

Okay, a TF, a Respec, and a monster badge. I can't go to sleep without at least planning a little of my Respec. Or doing it all the way, that is. Time to fix some of the problems when I tried to go cookie-cutter. I swap Hurdle for Health, to finally try the power out for myself. I plan to get Hover for vertical movement anyway, and Fly for the Shadow Shard. I am going to do something potentially risky and slot up Electric Fence, since it's almost up there on the Brawl index with Power Bolt. I want to experiment for a change with an unusual build, and finally try to make this power they stick you with from the beginning a little more useful. I'll skip Power Bolt for now, I can always snap it up later if I want. Charged Brawl comes back, so I don't need to get Air Superiority again; this is followed by Power burst, Sniper Blast, and Havoc Punch. We're going to do some blapper stuff after all. I can't resist Hasten and Super Speed, I love the speed. Can't help it. I'm addicted to speed. There, I said it! This still gets me to Stamina at 20, but with seven powers, and I even have a little experience with Havoc Punch on the test server. Aim, Build Up, and Hover come next. That way, I have some time before I decide how I want to slot Hover and Fly. Decisions, decisions. Slotting is actually the hardest. I can't give up all the slots I'm used to on this guy with my blasts for the blapper stuff. I just can't. I resolve to do a blapper later, and hold the melee attacks for when I have to use them. I'll still slot my other stuff first. The good news is I have Hasten, Stamina, Sniper Blast, and Power Blast fully slotted. The bad news is I haven't figured out how to slot anything more in Electric Fence!

I've got a global buddy Crenson who sent me a tell after reading this journal, and he has a high level Electric blaster, so I've been chatting with him for some advice. Finally I decide to just have fun with the build, and slot Electric Fence all the way up. Stamina goes back to five slots so I can put one more in Havoc Punch just for testing. I lock in my crazy ideas before I can change my mind. If this turns out to be as big a mistake, I'll Respec at 34, but I also want to experiment with unusual builds just to see what the survival rate is. And the fun quotient. I can't forget the fun! I set my title to the Legendary Ultra Meltdown, and skip the second title. I don't need to have two titles every time, just because they're available. Look at me, bucking convention. Must be because it's after four in the morning...

With my comments about CoV and Issue Updates, you can probably figure out about how far in the past I'm writing. Since I am posting more frequently, it's getting closer and closer to real-time.

Entry 51

Okay, I freely admit it now, I'm an addict. Diamond Cut's computer is down, he's getting a new one, and he's had so much bad luck with it, it's not even funny anymore. So while I tease him mercilessly, and we invent a new term that's worse than Murphy's Law, I log on Ultra Meltdown and work off all of his debt. I join one blind invite for the heck of it, and it's not the greatest group, but nobody dies, either. I'm getting spoiled, I think, after all of the great teaming. A normal team isn't good enough anymore, I want the fun that comes with great teams. Or just like a high school student who hates mediocrity, if I can't get an A, at least give me an F. If I join a terrible team, at least I'll have another war story, a nightmare or a tale of triumph in helping them to improve. The worst thing is to be in an unremarkable team, with nothing to report about them, I might as well go solo. Some of it is the chatter, this group was mostly radio-silent, but not because they were pedal-to-the-metal, attacking all-out and non-stop, they just didn't have anything to say. It's hard to enjoy the interaction part of the game when everyone on the team is like that.

The next night, I take him to level 24 finally, and get my Build Up back, after losing it in my foolish Respec way back when. I notice that when he kneels to Rest, my character looks like Darth Vader, and I make a note to ditch his cape on the regular main costume, it just doesn't fit. I'll do it when I have money, my characters are always broke at this level. I complete a story arc, and feel let down when the reward is only a DO at this level. Ultra Meltdown is Energy/Electric, so I'm acutely aware of some of the dislike for Knockback. When I'm solo, it can save my neck, but in a group, I find I'm saving it for the end, and using it to finish off a thug or two. It's not as exciting as using it to knock a vast group of baddies on their collective rears, sending them flying and enjoying the massive doses of numbers floating above their heads. Makes me wonder if I should slot it any more, or just keep it as more of an emergency button, to sweep back someone who gets too close. I'm still recovering from the bad Respec choices I made, so I should be slotting up my two bread-and-butter attacks more anyway, get them back to where they were, before I worry about anything else. That, and maybe finding Respec team and undo some damage to my beloved Blaster.

I'm feeling a lot of love for CRM with my use of him, but Ultra was the second character I created, and the energy attacks are great animations. I think I'm always going to enjoy using this character. Each one has a slightly different personality that I assume, and it depends on the archetype. With CRM, it disturbs me when somebody falls in battle. As Martial Master, I jump in-between my teammates and the bad guys to take the hit for them if they get in trouble. Ultra Meltdown won't jump in the way, but he'll use his best Knockback power to take the heat off an ally in trouble, and blast for all he's worth to put the thug out of commission quickly. It occurs naturally with the powers you have, but I'm wondering if I can figure out how to roleplay a character out-of-archetype, so to speak, and not automatically slip into certain behaviors just because I'm playing a certain AT. Something to experiment with later.

I've got about 30 names picked out for City of Villains, depending on what powers we can choose. It will be interesting to see how many of them are already taken, since I plan on developing most of my characters as soon as the game is available. It will probably take me a day or two just to set up my costumes and names, who knows when I'll start actually playing? I'm feeling a sense of anticipation now for both Issue 4 and CoV. We just need Diamond Cut to get his new system first, because I read somewhere the Hess TF is already going away with the Update, something about the storyline moving along, and I haven't done it with a single character yet.

Happy 50th Entry!

Oh, no, you have to go away, Gilgamesh! They're all going to come here and start pointing out all of my mis-spellings and poor grammar! Move along folks, nothing to see here... (Gil, when are you going to write the expose that shows the Union is on the Families' payroll for using the University construction as graft for the mob? We want new story arcs for I5!)

I have to tell a personal story real quick about one of my first attempts at publishing a piece of work in my high school creative writing magazine. An English teacher passed out copies of the magazine to his class and asked them to write about their favorite work in the issue, and their least favorite. Half the class wrote about the story I wrote! I wrote a satirical piece making fun of Star Trek, basically in a movie script fashion, and I'm sure I ripped off a line or two from a Mad Magazine before I even understood what plagiarism meant (good thing to learn on your own when you're a freshman, though, saves you lots of grief from a teacher pointing it out in the future).

Anyway, the class was divided into four camps. The first group loved Star Trek and loved my story, thought it was hilarious. The second group loved Star Trek and hated my story, treating my teasing of the genre as heresy and sacrilege. The third camp loved my story because -get this- they hated star Trek! The fourth outfit hated my story because, well, they hated Star Trek, and anything to do with it.

So it was at a very young age that I learned people approach your writing with their own view as a starting point, and you have no choice but to go along with the ride. I was amused at all of the equal, disparate compliments and criticisms, and took none of it to heart except the realization that I was able to get most of the class to comment on my work rather than anyone else's. One thing was clear, I had managed to grab peoples' attention.

I hope to continue to hold your interest. I appreciate that you could be doing a million other things with your time, and my ideas have been worthy enough to merit your attention. Again, many thanks for the great encouragement and compliments. I'll even try to speed up my posts! Here's a long one, since we're at...

Entry 50

Is the game too easy now, a year later? Well, once you get a good team together, it usually is. It's easy for the most part, but I've been palling around with a Regen scrapper, and then an Invul Scrapper for the most part, and before that I was on top of the world - and doing backflips - with Elude. It seems most players do actually go after the easiest xp in the game. Sometimes that's street-hunting because you don't want to spend time running all over the map. Sometimes it's missions, which is great, since I like the story flavor, and I enjoy doing that content, despite some annoying map designs. The way to make things interesting may be harder to code, though. We want things like maps that affect our powers. Your latest power you just got? Surprise, in this map, it doesn't work. The next map, hey, guess what, you have reduced Accuracy throughout the whole thing, due to a special device the Boss you're hunting has cooked up. They've done things along this line with the Vahz wasting disease, and the exploding Lab Equipment that gives you Temp Powers, so I don't know how much harder this would be. But it would be unexpected, it would shake things up. You could even have it randomized, so that not every mission does this to you. Or at least, it wouldn't be the same mission each and every time.

How about a save 5 hostages mission, and the boss has declared you are not allowed to use any travel powers (just as an example). All your travel powers don't work on that map, just like you can set up for the Arena. And it's a timed mission. Aaaagh! Good luck! As we pass level 25, go ahead and shake us up. Not by nerfing the power sets permanently, but by temporary situations that throw us off balance. Right now, anyone who has played for a while is like a police officer training all on all the same simulator scenarios. We're getting perfect scores because we know how and where everything is. Pop a hostage in front of the normal criminal cardboard, and watch what happens to the veteran officer. Does he go on habit and fire anyway? Or is he experienced enough to react and adapt to the suddenly-changing situation? Just some thoughts that occurred to me as I was thinking about which direction the game should go. Might be interesting. Not that I'm bored right now, but from a first-timer's point of view, we are ready for a challenge, but it's more fun for us when we don't know precisely what the challenge is. Give us some mystery and see what happens!

One thing that took a while to sink in: this game will change. My entire experience has been computer games, learning how the rules worked, and which ones I could "break." The only new things to learn came when an expansion came out, with new forces and abilities, but the old framework was always in place, and all of the old units still worked in the same way. In a MMORG, the powers can change, the maps can change, an entire Task Force can disappear... anything is fair game, really. And just as different people like to read different books and see different movies, different personality styles will like or dislike a particular change.

All I can do is observe my own reactions. I loved Elude, but am hoping future changes to the SR line will make me want to go back a third time to that power set, my first and original favorite. I loathed the -ACC on travel powers, and can deal with the current Suppression. I have no problem with the length of Task Forces, even though it's a rare day when I can pull one off, time-wise. I like the Positron TF, and detest that I can never find a good team unless I assemble it myself. I don't mind debt, even at the lower levels, and don't initially like the idea of getting rid of debt for the first ten levels of play. I don't mind the challenge of the Sewer Trial, or think it's too hard. I think Hamidon is boring, and wish there was a limit to the amount of people that were eligible to take him on at once, or at least that there was a limit to HOs (/e refrain from perverted comment). I'd like Fitness to become Inherent someday. I want Flashback. I want to be able to rent a jet pack in the Shadow Shard.

I prefer missions and good story content, I love the new Knockback feature, and although it's an additional challenge, something about it makes me really not care. I'm turning from one of those stodgy people who hates change into a good player who is ready for additional challenges and can adapt to things that others might consider "un-fun," or ‘fun-ruining,' like the Elude change, the Suppression, and the Knockback. Or at least, I'm more willing to keep an open mind about it. Oh, and I'm officially excited about City of Villains.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm sure blinkies still make a sound now.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, Red Haven told me I had my sound turned down way too much. for a couple days there, I had thought that the Devs had changed blinkies!

Entry 49

Diamond Cut still doesn't have his computer back, but it's been days since I've played. I log on CRM, just to clear out a mission or two. If I do some of mine solo, he won't level up as fast. Yeah, that's why I'm doing it. It's nice to solo at a leisurely pace, one of the few drawbacks to teaming is you're usually moving fast almost all the time. I'm also curious to know how well my Defender will do when five of his powers are designed only to help others. Those are the ones that are slotted up, not my attacks. Turns out my Healing Aura is all I need to keep me going, it works better than trying to solo a Blaster. Radiation Blast may have an advantage, its first two attacks cycle very fast, and I'm still loving my Proton Volley. Hover helps out with a yellow-con, Recovery Aura keeps me moving, add in Aim and my biggest problem is finding the blinkies. Wish they still made a sound. What's neat, though, is when I go to get a bird's-eye view of the cave area, and I can see the blinkie. As I get closer, there's a wall in the way, but I know the blinkie is somewhere behind it. I'm glad for that feature, at least. I complete the mission, but tackling two white-conning Council goons gets me in the hospital. Cute. Eh, I needed to go sell my Enhancements anyway, this is quicker. Debt fades away without me noticing once I'm on a team. Still, two white-cons taking me out reminds me I have to be very careful on my own.

A blind invite comes, and I join just to see what's up. The communication isn't very quick or clear, so I let them know I'm in the middle of a mission in the Wolf's Throat, and quit. After I complete that, a tell comes from someone else, asking if I can help them out. Tells are much better, so I say sure. Nice big group of eight, most around level 27 or 28, plus a couple lowbies. Everyone is very responsive from the start when I ask to gather for buff, and let my Recovery Aura go off. They must all know what is does... It's not the best coordinated at first, so I have lots of healing to do. Which is fine for me, because I've learned I can even keep up with bonehead maneuvers from some people, and keep them alive anyway. I keep everyone alive during the first wave of enemies, and everyone is really impressed, complimenting me on the heals. That never gets old. We have one Kheldian with us, and he does drop once while I'm healing a couple others, but that's it for the whole mission. Debt-free! See how easy that was?

After the mission, half the group leaves, like always, but we pick up a couple more and have two Scrappers, A Blaster, and the leader Tank. The Tank has to sell, and we have a lot of downtime, so I suggest we take out three turrets, which is my mission. Easy as pie, but I couldn't have done it on my own. I level up as we take out a turret, and then it's off to a warehouse mission, as the Tank leader grabs more people until we're back up to a team of eight. It's a lower-level mission, and seems to take longer than necessary, but nobody is ever in any danger of dying, or even really needs my heals. After it's over, I go train up. The team mechanics were not so great, very little communication, and no fun chat, either. I tend to stick around longer if there's lively discussion, or even bad jokes. Hey, wait a minute. Level 27 means I can get level 30 enhancements! I just get a couple, because I'm still a little broke, but I put two damage in my new slots for Proton Volley. If I'm gonna solo more today, I might as well make it count. I get some for Heal Other and X-Ray Beam, and that almost breaks the bank right there. How am I supposed to keep up with the Joneses (or the Statesmans) on this budget? What level is that again where I'm supposed to have money coming out of my ears?

I'm not sure if it's because I'm a Defender, but I seem to receive more requests for teaming. Task Forces, Respec missions, the works. If I had more free time I'd be tempted. It's probably a good thing that some of my alts also have Empathy, then. That was the only power set I duplicated among all of my alts. I didn't know why I did that at the time, other than a lack of powers to choose from among the Controller and Defender power sets, after I had chosen most of the rest for my characters.

I spot a dead blaster and offer a rez, since I haven't used it in a while, and no sooner does he accept and I bring him up than he's under attack. He was trying to log when he got ambushed right by a Striga Contact, and we end up in a free-for-all with Council goons all around four heroes. One guy goes Local and says, "Oh, man, is this your ambush?" He thought it was his. We all share a chuckle, and the Blaster tries to log again, and is ambushed again! By Warriors this time, so I help him polish off those just to let the poor guy log. My next mission is deep in enemy territory in the Council Base, and up high, which makes me resolved to get Fly for my next power, just in case I was tempted to get something else. Hasten is still only two-slotted, but in teams my Recovery Aura charges about as fast as I need it to, so I'll put those slots off until 29, I like having a little more bite to my Proton Volley. I go through one more Council mission, and realize it was much easier. If I had my enhancements all up to the max, I probably would not have been challenged that much at all. I have bigger trouble sneaking past the purple-cons just to get to the mission in the first place.

I receive four more blind invites, two each from the same person, one of them gives them 15 seconds apart. The second person at least sends me a tell after the second invite, but it's for a TF, and I don't quite have the time. I just want to take out 15 Council members. One council goon is distracted by a sky Raider, a red-conning Sky Skiff that comes after me when I take out his sparring partner. Why not? I burn through half my candy, most of it green, but I take it out. Cool! Who says only Scrappers get to have that kind of fun? With one bubble of xp on level 27, and several missions gone through without Diamond Cut, I'm hoping we can get to the TF without him getting to level 28.

Entry 48

Diamond Cut and CRM are cutting through Striga mostly to try to get to the TF, but I like the additional story elements they have added, and the Striga zone is my favorite over Talos and IP, the nearest level-equivalent zones. We also break occasionally to do missions in other zones, but only because they are badge missions. One thing that makes Striga especially nice is that all the missions are actually inside the one zone, you don't have to go traipsing all over Paragon to get somewhere. At this stage, when you've played as often as we have, that's a real blessing.

We're alternating his missions and mine, and one "destroy portal' mission is over so fast I'm dizzy. We start the mission and DC is there ahead of me, so literally ten seconds after I enter, I get a mission complete sound and 2000 xp and Influence. Nice! The Holy Shotgun Shells we have as a temp power is great for where we are as well, the extra attack comes in very handy for me. Oooh, and the Wolf Whistle now! Can't wait to try it out once, and then hoard the other charges for Hamidon or something! This is why I can't understand people who complain they've gone through all the content already. Temp powers are great fun, and there are all sorts of neat effects you can try on your pet with the buffs, and teleporting him into strange settings and taking screenshots, there are just tons of things to do besides just play the game. Speaking of screenshots, I take a dive on purpose, since DC has done so many (I lost track after ten suicides), and take a screenshot of myself dead underwater. The water in Striga is so clean, that seems wrong, somehow. DC is away from me, and watches my health go down. "Homey?"

"I have 7 bubbles," I tell him. I don't want to hit 27 until we're actually doing the first Striga TF. I love to level up in the middle of a TF! We log off and he comes over to hang out for a few minutes in real life, and we start discussions on our next tag-team duo, starting from Outbreak together. He convinces me to plan for a Stone/Energy Melee Tanker, while he wants to roll a Rad/Rad Defender on Virtue server. We talk about letting me finally read all of the Hollows story content, and tracking badge missions and temp power missions, so we can get as much of the fun stuff we both like into each character as we go. And we make jokes about doing CoV together, and how much damage we'll do. What is the technical term for the disease you have when you gather to start plotting for future plans of virtual world domination...?

The next night my buddy's computer is brought over to me for maintenance, so he can't play (nyah nyah!). I log in Martial Master to do what Diamond Cut suggested and change my settings from Invincible to Heroic. Now DeVore is a level 48 boss instead of a level 50. I get her health down a lot farther, but no matter how much candy I pop, she still takes me out. Guess I should've gone in with more than two respites, I might have actually been able to pull it off. 229,817 debt. Eh. No biggie at this point, even though it is the most I've ever had. If I leave the settings the way they are, my buddy can help me with the Praetorian story arc with all the AVs in it. I go back to the login screen.

I browse around the servers and decide to take Counterbalance for a quick spin, he's my level 4 Natural Scrapper with Katana and Dark Armor. He's my runt character, a guy I made small to see how much faster he could run around town to get places. This is my first chance to see the Council missions at the lower levels, with the revised warehouses and such. Not sure I care for the dim lighting (or the Council, meh!), but some of the props that are leftover from the 5th still look cool. I love my contact, Susan Davies. Every time I go back to her for a mission, she asks me, "are you ready for some action?" Oh, yeah...

I run across a red-con, he's level 6 to me. I remember always avoiding those when I was a low-level character when I first played. Now I'm thinking, "Hmmm..." I pop some candy, turn on my two toggles and plunge ahead. Got him! One definite thing has changed since I first started this game, I'm a lot less hesitant to try and test my limits than ever before. Orange-cons used to hand me my head at low levels, and I instinctively ducked and covered. It's good to know it hasn't become an irreversible habit to avoid potentially tough situations. I get a blind invite and think what the heck, sure. Oh no, it's one of those hero-who-is-really a-villain guys, I just made a sarcastic post on the boards today about those types. He drafts a third person to do a warehouse mission, and I actually level up in it. Oh no, I can get debt now! They both seem to be relatively inexperienced, but they get the job done easy enough. I realize I need to sell and go look at my slotted enhancements. When did I decide it was a good idea to put two slots in Rest? Man, I hope I didn't do those bonehead things to all these characters way back when I first rolled them, or I'm going to use up all my Respecs fast. On the other hand, it's a wonderful thing that I had a dozen characters already rolled up, because they all have free Respecs! I'll try to save this one though, it's not worth it to move around just one slot. Bah, it's already past my bedtime, how did that happen?

Entry 47

I get a blind invite while buying enhancements. Really? At level 49?!? I have no problem with that if my team seek is on, but you are seriously going to issue a blind invite to me when I'm not looking for anything? While I'm typing about it, he invites me again! There really should be an etiquette section in the tutorial everyone is required to take. There oughta be a law! Gotta watch out, I'm starting to sound like old people. I'm doubling-up on enhancements, going from 50 to 52, and it's taking a while. I'm hoping after a couple more updates, the Devs will let us transfer greater amounts of influence, and also work on a streamlined way to combine enhancements, at least for the higher levels. I play around with it some more, and have fun with the Reset button, since I haven't heard that sound in a while. I like to put two enhancements in the combination slots, hit the Reset button, and watch them each make a beeline for their respective places along with the neat sound. If I click fast enough, I can trigger the sound twice in a row on one combo. I am obviously stalling to keep from going to bed at this point.

Finally filled up on enhancements, I head back to the mission. Was there some sort of timer? All of the goons are back! Oh well. Time to test Quickness and work off some debt! As I go through, I stop using Hasten, and turn off my Super speed as well. I clear away over 60k of debt just going through the minions, even though they con lower to me now. Once I get to the Boss, I put on everything, Elude, FF, S Speed, Hasten, the whole kit and kaboodle. I also pump myself up with candy! Now let's see who's boss.

Not even close. She hits me first time out of the gate. I forgot to pop Elude! Okay, that's better. She still hits me, and her bar barely goes down a quarter before I'm running out of greens and End, and... hospital! Okay, my experiments on AVs have not gone well overall, I haven't soloed one yet. I send out a Broadcast, "An AV put me in the hospital. Help me get revenge! Please send tell to Martial Master if interested." Wait a couple minutes. No response. "Will nobody help me to avenge my defeat at the hands of Vanessa DeVore?" Crickets. Sigh. Well, it is early in the morning now. I'll have to grab some assistance at a later date. I leave beaten and battered, but unbowed. The next time we meet, I'm bringing some friends, and I will be victorious!

Entry 46

Diamond Cut dies on purpose in a cave, because we want to do the Striga Task Force. The upper limit is 27, and we don't want to mess with Exemplar if we can help it. I resurrect him when I get there, and we coast through the mission.

CRM tends to offer a rez to any hero on the ground as he passes, but only half of them take me up on it. A lot of people seem to prefer to stay face-planted, but I'm at a loss for the reason. I always check around to make sure it's a safe area first, but if they want to look at dried gum on the sidewalk, more power to them. I hope it's not a pl'er who's always complaining about dps, though...

I'm seeing a lot of people with the Tiger motif now, with tiger usually in the name, and having stripes in their costume. There used to be only a handful of us, Martial Master only ran into three or four the first few months of the game that had stripes, and now I'm running into two characters a day. The latest one I encounter even has the same chest symbol. Maybe I can challenge him to PvP and loser has to change his costume...

We head to IP to take out 25 or 30 family, and I end up hopping into a tree accidentally. No matter how I change the camera view, I still have tree branches in my way, and as I target a Capo Gunner, it looks like laser blasts are coming from a tree to attack the guy!

As soon as CRM is online the next day, Diamond Cut lets me know he has died four more times intentionally. He's trying very hard to do the Striga TF without an Exemplar. I have to let him die a couple more times in-mission, and he still levels on our last outing, to 27. After that small number of missions to set us up for the Striga TF, Diamond and I log, but I am feeling real nostalgic for Martial Master. I log him on and take him into deal with Vanessa DeVore. Just before I get to her, I level up to 49. That was quick! I had no idea xp could accumulate that quickly.

I check out her bio, and she's at level 50. She sees me! I'm dead! Anyone watching me would have thought I was a chicken with my head cut off the first time she hit me. I wasn't using Elude for any of her minions, and I got disoriented, so I couldn't see the way clear to get out of her range. 99,000 is what you get at level 49, hmm? I use an Awaken, because although I know she can definitely take me out, I haven't really had a good test against her yet. And I could care less about any debt at this point.

I do start thinking about the difficulty levels, though. Without an AV, Invincible seems too easy still, at this point. It would be one thing if I was using Elude, but I didn't use it once. I even turned off Focused Fighting (FF) halfway through, and still nearly got through to the end without stopping once. I'm wondering if the Devs can makes level 49 and 50 a little bit tougher in scaling up the bad guys, or if it's only a few select classes, like Scrappers, or the commonly-mentioned Fire Tank. But the fact that my FF is only slotted with its default slot, and I wasn't getting too hurt by red-conning Iron Strongmen without it makes me wonder if the high-end game might be unbalanced in our favor. Or the players have just gotten too good, better at using their powers than anybody originally thought they could be. It does feel right out of a comic though, with me tearing through the warehouse, batting away the cronies to get to a final showdown with the dreaded arch-villain! Heck, she's already given me a beat-down first, just like commonly happens in comic stories, before I rally back and put her in her place!

Well, maybe. First I head in to get a couple screenshots, and she sees me again. I pop Elude, but she's still hitting me pretty good. I slink away (at Super Speed, ‘natch), and rest up so I can quit fooling around and get back to business. Then I figure, hey, why not go train up and get Quickness now, and start to see how much of a difference that makes in my attack sequence. And I might as well upgrade my enhancements... I didn't want to go to bed anyway, did I? I've got one Bewildering of Hermes in with Eagles Claw now, to help with Disorient. Not sure how to measure its effects, other than to hope it helps some. Ugh! Two failures in a row on my attempt to combine range increases to Teleport. No fair!

Entry 45

I get back in town on a Friday night, and Diamond Cut asks to do some gaming. He has actually stuck to his word and not done much in the way of missions while I've been gone. He's been going after grey-cons to get badges. We play for a little bit, but the jet-lag has me off my game, and I simply have to get some sleep! The next day, however, is Task Force Day. We head over to IP and talk to Sister Psyche, who feels a disturbance. We are joined by the Scrapper Bishi, and two Controllers, NaS., and Foxfire X. We are Task Force Vixen! Another good team, and we make good time, although these things do tend to take between four to five hours.

After a break for food, DC and I get back online and decide to do the Respec Trial. I still have a free one for CRM from the Issue Update, but a second one can't hurt. We are joined by three Blasters and a Scrapper, and proceed to rock the house. DC is a little dubious at first, because to be honest, a couple of the Blasters were not the most experienced, from the way they kept drawing aggro. We had a few deaths despite my best attempts, but not too unusual for the first mission in most Task Force teams. We mesh much better after that, and proceed to the finals. Until we get to the dreaded Terra Volta part. Or rather, getting to TV, I should say. It's all fine and dandy for those with flight, or Regen or Invuln Scrappers who can survive rushing past purples, but what about little ol' medics? I die twice just getting there. Oh, my kingdom for somebody with Recall Friend! DC is laughing his butt off at us, since he has Flight. I told him it was his turn to take Teleport, but will he listen? Nooooooooo.

Once inside, we actually have our one Scrapper death, as our guest Scrapper gets too close to a Proximity Bomb. I end up down one more time from being too close to an exploding Sky Raider. Inside the reactor core, wave after wave launches at us, and we hold our own for the first five waves. Then it starts to get iffy. At some point, each of our Blasters is down, and later two are down at once. I've got the team menu up and Super Speed on, and as soon as someone gets in trouble, I toggle the auto-follow to them to start a heal. If two people are in trouble at the same time, though, they are not necessarily in the same place, and there are three deaths right when I'm casting the heal on them. As soon as we clear things a little, I get to use my Resurrect power, so it's not a total waste; it's a neat-looking power! I'm thinking of renting my services in a zone on a Medic Day, just running around asking for team invites to locations so I can rez people.

We get the job done, and all earn a Respec. I feel good about all the nice comments about my healing, but DC calls me up and has some even nicer words. He's been around several healers, and in a couple different MMORGs as well, but he says I did a fantastic job of healing. Which is great, but I learned something else in the core, too: I hate it when people die on my watch. I know it's gonna happen, but when I'm the primary healer, I still always feel I could have done better. I can't complain too much, though, because it was a really fun trial, and I know most of the deaths were unavoidable, and my knockouts will keep me from leveling too fast. A good night all around, and a lengthy one as well. I think I've turned into a power gamer again...

Outside the Journal Commentary

This post is a little different from the others only in the sense that I just thought of it, as opposed to thinking of it months back.

I've been thinking about the risk/reward thing lately, and I think there should be one more measurement in the game. For instance, the Arena introduces chess-like ratings (that might be one of the best Arena-related ideas, in my opinion). I'm thinking the Mission Difficulty Slider should be called something other than Reputation, and we could have a Reputation standing. Or a Q rating, or Approval rating, or Honor Standing, or Prestige Level, Eclat, whatever you want to call it.

Instead of handing out more xp for a mission, let's take one of the Trial zones like Boomtown or Faultline. We don't go there often. What about missions that take you there, that are maybe a little more difficult, but they give normal or even reduced xp, but they give a bonus amount of Eclat. Your regular missions would give a very small amount, or none at all, even. Really, it's just a mechanism so we can have a little more content in the game, which is the magic word. Well, fun is the magic word. But fun content is the master spell!

Would the rating have to mean anything? Maybe not, but I figure Badge collectors like Diamond Cut and I would jump at the excuse to go do it and collect another thing. Maybe the more Eclat you have, the better your enhancements work, or maybe they unlock additional "secret" missions that make your Omega clearance actually mean something after all. Maybe they give this rating, and it goes for an entire story arc, until one final mission that does actually give some bonus xp or a badge. It's amazing how much we'll do for the sake of collecting a badge. It's a good thing we don't go after drugs like we go after badges, who knows where it would end? Coh is our drug, and we're happy little addicts. More, please?

Entry 44

Cramming in a little bit of fun before I leave for a week, Diamond Cut and I are joined by Chive, a Tank. We speed through a few missions, and just as Chive has to log, I level up. I take Aim for my power at 24, but maybe I should have taken Hover, at least that would get me over the wall in Perez. I can't jump that wall to save my life. I clear out some old missions, and am introduced to new contacts. Some of these are ones I haven't done before. Whoops, I out-leveled them as well! I'll have to go through this again as a Scrapper sometime so I can read their story content, go solo so I don't out-level stuff so much. How can power-levelers complain about lack on content when they're skipping past it all? There's too much for me to do on one character. My only saving grace is I've done most of it as Martial Master already.

I've settled on the idea that CRM won't be taking the Fitness line at all. At this point I have Recovery Aura six-slotted, and Hasten with one. As soon as I build up Hasten to a 6-slot, that should be great for me. I was wondering which character would be one of the easiest to skip that pool, looks like I found it sooner than I thought I would. Being free to take other powers certainly does break up the dreary prospect of taking five powers (Fitness and two powers to get your travel power) from levels 12 to 20. My plan when I revisit my other alts is to team more often and allow some "slack," if you will, so if Stamina is still recommended, I can put it off for a level or two, and add a badly-needed attack or other power in the middle of the build. the trick to this game is still finding good players to team with on a recurring basis.

Teaming is what it's all about. Two players working together, especially if you've already gotten to the upper levels like me and my friend have, drastically changes the game. I can barely solo Rugged sometimes as a Blaster, but combine my Defender with Diamond Cut, and we have to up the settings just so there's a hint of a challenge. The Archetypes genuinely compliment each other well. I've taken CRM from level 11 to 24 in just three days. I have no clue how long that took me with my Scrapper. My Scrapper even died a lot more often than my Defender. The current pace suits my style quite nicely. I'm not standing around doing nothing getting pl'ed, we're moving fast, kicking butt and taking names. We're going fast enough that it's not too bad a grind, and we're experienced enough that deaths are few. I'm also leveling at a fast enough pace that I can gain new powers and still understand how they work, and not get bored with what I have, or start complaining about how I don't have neat power X yet. Because it's coming soon enough, and I just got a new power today anyway! In short, I'm having fun!

Daily?!? You want me to post daily?!? I'd have to quit my job and play full time to have material to write up that often! Now if only I could figure out a way to earn money that way...

I've just been afraid to bring out my SR scrapper because... well... I'm really a coward and I hate pain. With perma-Elude, I wouldn't get hit, and I'm afraid of getting hit by all those nasty villains now. If I don't log on, they can't get at me.

Thanks for the statement, Statesman, now I can have an idea of when changes might be coming. (goes off to play his healer for a while...)

He didn't pound me into the dirt the next time he saw me, anyway!

Entry 43

Where Martial Master is used to ignoring bad guys, CRM is using Super Speed to pass yellow- and orange-cons. Every so often, though, CRM gets tagged and knocked on his butt, and I get a rude reminder that I can't be as nonchalant about running around near bad guys as MM does. I hit the Hollows for a couple missions, and my character look great running in Hollows. The scenic vistas and the glow of Super Speed as you jump off the top of a cliff always looks cool. The newer zones have nice detail to them like that, if all the new content is this good, it speaks well for the future of the game.

Over in Striga, Stephanie Peebles gives me a mission, and I haven't even been referred to her by one of my other contacts yet. I'm skipping so many missions, if I'm still playing in a few years, I may have to create a new character again just to run through some of these. I learn more about the filtering mechanism of the game, as I try to type "About it," and I put the space in the wrong place. It comes out: "abou @*&$#!>!" Heh.

DC and I start alternating missions in Striga, with his difficulty set on Unyielding. I switch mine to Invincible, and we still rock through them. He is usually one level above me. I die once as I try to figure out exactly how much aggro using Irradiate will get me. Enough to send me to the hospital, if I'm not careful!

I start thinking about builds and powers, and contemplate what reward we can get at level 60. Maybe the ability to roll a character that can choose from all powers at 60, and have a no-limit respec at 70. In other words, you can do the Respec mission as many times as you want, and always choose Respec. For those players that have three or so characters up that far, this would enable them to experiment with all of the powers finally, rather than spend endless hours building up a single hero with only two power sets to choose from. Most players won't work on building up ten heroes, but if you could open up different powers at 60, and let them Respec into different builds, I think a lot of "veterans" would come back and have a ton of fun with these options. I'm not sure what complications that might develop with game balance, but I can already see the flavor-of-the-month of all-power-sets-builds posts.

I'm also liking more and more the idea of an origin-specific or AT-specific Inherent power (Taunt for Tanks, or something new), and the idea of training to make Fitness inherent? It makes sense after running around and jumping for six to eight levels that you could condition your body for these types of abilities. I does seem like 80-90 percent of builds have this line, and freeing up three more power slots might encourage players to experiment more with powers that are traditionally ignored. Repel, for example, is not taken often just because of advice on the boards, but with practice, this power can be useful, and it's a freakin' fun power anyway, I'd like to think we could have all-Repel teams running around with more grins and giggles, if people didn't have to choose so hard between other powers. Freeing up the Fitness line to be Inherent seems reasonable, and more to the point, more fun for us. Although I expect this game to grow more, I also believe that most of us who would play this game are already playing it, and it would be a nice reward for the tons of us who have a lot of high-level characters already. Those players who complain about their squishy Blasters will have an easier time, and those who want more of a challenge can always refuse to slot up Stamina. This would also let those of us who want to do concept-specific builds still have a way to contribute without getting dumped from teams because the team leader thinks we don't have the optimal build that he thinks our character would have when he invited us to the game, and things of that nature.

Edit: It was pointed out that this thread has seen 10,000 views, so here is an extra segment, and a heartfelt thank you to all the readers. I'll keep writing if you keep coming to listen to my story.

I log on CRM after midnight just to clear out my mission slots of the old worthless missions, but I catch a broadcast in IP saying the octopus monster is out. Martial Master hasn't even seen him yet! I join with the guy who sent the broadcast, then he promotes me to leader so I can go get a group of eight. Ariel Moon joins (who is on spring break, and never logs off, evidently), and we proceed to pick off the tentacles, one by one. I quickly find out I have no time to shoot, as healing is a full-time job, and people are still dropping all around me. I get dropped twice myself, but one of the team Teleports me back immediately each time. One Scrapper keeps hollering for Recovery Aura, and complains the first time when it misses her. I explain that she has to be next to me, but she claims I fired it off too fast. Now, I'm not an expert at timing, but she's got Super Speed, and almost the rest of the team doesn't and they still managed to get buffed. I send a tell to the guy who first spotted the monster, but he's too busy fighting to respond. The other, the complainer keeps asking for RA, and it's not even up yet. I'm only level 23, got six slots in it, but only one slot in Hasten right now, so we're nowhere near perma. I never reply to her, just hunker down and make sure I get off heals to the right people when they need them. I turn on my ring of Pain to reduce the monsters defense. The text says it drastically reduces a target's defense, so I'd like to think I contributed more than just heals and buffs, I got in a debuff as well! The tentacles drop one by one, and my debt is already gone when the head falls. No time to do what I had planned on originally, it's way past my bedtime!