RIP City of Heroes

Where to begin?

I guess I'll start by saying why I liked this game and why I am/was reluctant to try out other MMORPGs.

City of Heroes is built for casual play.  Logging on for 30 minutes is enough time to make progress on your character.  Sure you get more in game rewards by playing more, but the truth is you don't need to make a 40 hour a week commitment to make progress, even at end game.

City of Heroes is action packed.  If you are idling its your own damn fault.

I found a string of good people to play with.  The community in CoH is friendly and the server became your guild.

Those two things made up for its deficiencies, like lack of challenging content and the never ending grind for drops.


I first started playing because Sean and Sung gave good reviews.  Sung's review carried more weight; sorry Sean, you have a short attention span for games.  But when Sean stuck with it for more than 6 weeks I thought he might be onto something.  I of course chose the name Brass Justice because of a 15 year old joke.  (thanks Britt, who wouldn't let me be Steel Justice for that game of DC Heroes.  20 years later, I would much rather have the Brass Justice anecdote than the Steel Justice name).

So I hopped on the justice server with Sung and Sean and for a while we had a hoot.  Then we learned an acquaintance, Jeremy also played on justice with some of his friends.  We joined forces and had even more of a hoot.  To this day I remember Jeremy sniping the Envoy of Shadows from 'safe' range, then immediately dieing.  Jeremy hit level 50 and retired from the game, but not before getting me into a super group (or guild if you will).

My first super group was the Reluctant Heroes, and that proved prophetic.  That SG lasted exactly a week before the leader retired from the game and booted everyone out.  Jeremy got me into the Experts of Justice.

The EoJ was a group of folks that knew each other from Seattle, and grabbed some strays from whereever.    I don't know when they grabbed Liz, but she's also been in the EoJ forever.  They were a good bunch of players, and once again, a hoot.

About the time City of Villains dropped, I quit the game.  My primary, Brass, had hit about a dozen road blocks.  End game at the time consisted of facing bosses you had no prayer of beating without a big group.  Jeremy had retired, the EoJ weren't incredibly active and I got frustrated.


About 15 months later I returned for good.  EoJ was a little more active, a hoot was had once more.  Somewhere along the line I got an invite to my next guild Drow and Friends.

Vyze and Nive ran D&F, and D&F was an off shoot of an Everquest guild.  Completely different vibe from EoJ, which was a lot like sitting in you basement playing the play station with your friends.  D&F was as close to a raiding guild as you could get in CoH. 

So two guilds no waiting, and a hoot was had once more.  Except that the leadership of EoJ and D&F both quit that game.  Doh.

Enter Mermoine.  I have no shame in saying this.  Mermoine is a better player than I am.  It's not even close.  And once you get to know her, there isn't anyone you will like better.  It takes a while, because she doesn't suffer fools gladly, or at all really.  She introduced me to my current guild.  And pretty much, they all are better players than I am.  I sometimes feel like the nerd with the taped glasses thrilled to keep score for the high school baseball team.

Look, I'm not a bad player.  I pay attention, know whats going on in game, and can follow directions.  Since I activate all my powers via mouse, that really limits my game; I really can't assume leadership positions, because if I am typing, I'm not clicking buttons.  I also don't give a sh!t about super optimizing builds.  It's really not hard to get an adequately good build in CoH, and it just doesn't interest me to squeeze that final 10% that I miss.  Except you kind of notice it when I run with my new friends.

So to sign off, thanks to these global handles for making my CoH experience lots of fun.

Meridian
CyberMurph
Sango Sumeragi
Great Beyond
Liz
Mermoine
Vyze Krak
Nive
Rangle M. Down
disposablHero
Bionic Flea
Dirty Larry
UberGuy
Kilspyke
adhna
BlkFaclon
Illenia
Nakoa
Split Light
Silent Twilight
M o
Soliton Wave
Staxxy

Hope to see you all for City of Heroes 2

I don't have anything to say but I love this animated gif

Bringing back the Nerdy Recap

Lords of Waterderp

Juan just KILLED everyone.  Key here was intrigue cards, he played lots and lots and lots and got pretty good benefits.  Buildings did not play a huge role, on turn 2 we had a selection that just sucked.  So these became road blocked till they were bribed enough to make it worth getting.  

My game got screwed when I saw an opportunity to cascade quests.  I completed quest #1 which rewarded me 4 thieves and a quest.  Which I grabbed a quest from the board and immediately completed.  Whoops.  Should of read the quest closer.  Check that.  I should have read that period.  Quest took like 7 dudes and netted me ZERO points immediately, and two points per intrigue card played from here on out.  I had like 6 moves and 1 intrigue card left when I got this.  Whoops.

Truth is Juan won by 30 points and this had no bearing on the outcome, but playing better means I could have gotten within 10 of the leader.

Alhambra

I won!  Hooray!

I provided more evidence that longest wall wins.  I don't totally believe that, but allowing for exaggeration for effect it is absolutely true.

Anecdotal and with no actual statistics to back this up:  The player with the longest wall wins at least half the time.  Of the remaining wins, at least half of those are won by a player with a very competitive wall; defined as no more than 1 or 2 off the pace in rounds 1 and 2 and no more than 3 behind for end game.  A good wall total is a function of how many players are in the game.  Last night at a 4 player table, 15 was the longest and 7 was the shortest.

Now I had some tenets I played with last night too.

#1)  I cared very little about which suit the tiles were in during round 1.  Early on, you just want to get tiles in play.

#2) If there was an efficient exact change buy, I got it.  In 4 player, chances are every buy is going to advance your game.

#3) If something really helped and I had the money I bought it and said hell with efficiency.  The timing really worked out well because in all 3 rounds an inexact buy was followed by the scoring phase.

An interesting facet was that I didn't win a single color at round 3, but finished 2nd in half the suits and 3rd in the other half.

No Thanks!

My Eeyore like braying about taking the low valued cards proved justified as I got my ass kicked 3 games in a row.

F#@$ Breaking in new players

Nerdy Friday had two new players last night.  Welcome to my co-worker Brittany and her husband Bobby.  I said I'd blog about this; so to get this out of the way.  Brittany prematurely revealed two scoring cards in Amen-Re last night, the 9 farmer and east side/west side river card.

 now for the worst segue ever written, how do you get new people to return to your game night?

See its hard, gaming tables have different personalities and its hard to say if its a good match or not.

At Nerdy Friday, most everyone likes to win; its very competitive.  It's good-natured competition but its still fierce.  (as an aside here, while we are competitive we don't have a capital G 'Gamer' personality disorder.  We keep things friendly)

At Nerdy Friday we like to tease one one another.  Again good-natured, but you will get teased sometime during the night.  Probably by me.

Now are you wrong if you don't like fierce competition with a side of trash talk?  Absolutely not.  Games are supposed to be fun.  So if our style isn't to your taste, the only way to do it wrong is to come back and not have fun again.

Brittany and Bobby were both delights to play with last night.  They were friendly, smart, quick playing and very capable of firing back teasing barbs of their own and I hope they come back.

So how do I recruit them?  Well I don't.  I'm way too old to seek new gamers approval, all I can be is myself.  If it was fun for them I totally look forward to seeing them again, otherwise c'est le vie. 

Maybe its analogous to a new job interview when you already have a good job.  At that point you're not too needy, you really are finding a good fit.

F#$% the Newsroom

I am an Aaron Sorkin fan, just to make that clear.  I loved the West Wing; it might be my favorite show of all time.  Studio 60 was ok, and probably deserved a 2^nd season. But with the bidding war and excessive rights fees I can totally see why it didn’t make it past season 1.

The Newsroom is probably a bit better than Studio 60 and not as good as The West Wing.  Which isn’t quite fair, WW took a season to really hit its stride, and Studio 60 started slow too.  The Newsroom so far has lurched along.  Some episodes inducing cringes and some episodes showing flashes of Sorkin’s previous brilliance.  Quick take on the first 5.

• “We Just Decided Too” - very good pilot, and average episode.  Pilots are tough because you got to get people caring about characters you just introduced.  The beginning rant was awesome and right in the snappy banter sweet spot.

• “News Night 2.0”  -  lame.  It’s hard to buy that the ‘best EP there is’ is such a moron with email.

• “The 112^th Congress” – lame.  Although watching Jeff Daniels smack down the Tea Party was fun.  This episode covered 6 months in an hour.  It finally does introduce the bad guys though, stupid upper management.

• “I’ll try to fix you” -  good.  I really liked the depiction of everyday life and petty squabbles getting put on hold when something really important happens.

• “Amen” – good.  Explored the difficulty and consequences of trying to cover Arab Spring.   

Which brings us to “Bullies”

Bullies was good, but frustrating.  By my count there were 3 recycled West Wing plot elements.

#1 – Gay Republican refuses to be defined solely by his sexual orientation.  This right out of “The Portland Trip”   Quoting from that Wiki article

“Josh spends the evening discussing an anti-gay marriage bill (similar to the actual 1996 Defense of Marriage Act) with a gay Republican congressman, and can't really understand how a gay man could throw his support behind a measure that says he's a lesser citizen of the U.S. The Congressman says that he agrees with most of the Republican agenda and doesn't have to base his entire life around his sexuality, but does show visible contempt when some GOP colleagues fawn over his efforts in support of the bill.”

#2 – Primary protagonist reluctantly seeks therapy because he can’t sleep, and it is revealed that both male leads were abused by their fathers.  “Five Nights”

#3 – Snarky bodyguard watches over reluctant principle; CJ Craig in West Wing and Will McAvoy in Newsroom.  This is pretty much Mark Harmon’s character Simon Donovan.  This one bugged me the least because the story arc will not be the same, at least I doubt there will be sexual tension.  Plus the snark was really entertaining and the bodyguard might be my favorite character on the show.

So why does this matter?

It’s actually praise worthy to draw inspiration from previous works.  The classics are classic for a reason and very little is truly original.  When you crib near verbatim you are turning your show into West Wing’s greatest hits.    And if the show keeps going in this direction I will just sign up for Amazon Prime and stream WW’s reruns.