Steady's Gaming Blog

APB made a nice post in their forums yesterday, addressing some of the issues the game has. See the post here. Here are the highlights.

Cheaters, catching them and removing them, I always like this one.

Vehicle Handling – A major overhaul to make the vehicles less slippery. I am not too sure about this one. I found the learning curve for driving a bit steep, but after a bit of practice, I did not have any trouble. The other day I was doing some nice slides, and moving between cars in traffic rather well. My biggest problem is the other live players; they tend to run into me quite a bit. In fact some people are just grieving, by putting up burnt car barricades, and playing demolition derby. So I hope they do not change it too much.

Combat- they are looking at every aspect. I do have a problem killing people. That has more to do with me, then it does the game. I have trouble aiming, but with that being said, I think it does need a bit of work, so that is a good thing.

Camping- going to address this issue as well, another one of those human factors, that if peoples would just play fair, and play as the game right this would not be a problem, but hey always has to be that camper.

Missions- making them a bit more complex, and deeper, a bit more strategy. I am all for that, I am an old dude, no hand eye coordination, strategy is my friend.

They also mentioned matchmaking; I will address that in another post, as I have pretty long opinion on this subject.

Again, I like this game. It is very entertaining to play. For me it is not about kill to death ratio, more about fun, which I have. I have to give the devs of APB credit; they have not crawled under a rock, and hidden from their player base. They post in the forums, and on their webpage they have a twitter feed, which does not always shed a positive light on APB. So that is pretty good, they cannot please everyone, someone is always going to have a problem, so it is nice to see them moving in a positive direction.

The first thing I liked was that I could make a character just like me. A very old, slow, slightly overweight (ok fat) guy. I roll up an Enforcer, one of the good guys. So I run the tutorial, pretty easy. I zone into the social district. I make sure all my weapons are ready to go, and then I zone into an action zone.

This is where the fun really begins. There are two types of missions. The first is a “Call to Back-up” type mission. Another enforcer is running a mission, and needs help, so you help him out. The second type of mission was from a contact. In my case, it was pretty simple. I needed to pick up three cars that had been stolen, and drive them to the police holding lot. When I accepted the mission, a call goes out on the criminal side for someone to stop me from performing this task. In my case a mini skirt wearing criminal named Valentine Raine answered the call. So for the next five minutes or so, we played a nice game of cat and mouse. I managed to get one car back to the lot, but not before we killed each other a few times. She was waiting for me at the second car. She had picked out a nice spot on top of a building. I saw her, but she got me. So I snuck up behind her the next time, and got here. Jumped into the second car and drove off. I did not make it to the holding lot, my driving skills are bad, and I crashed the car. I failed the mission, but had fun.

I have read a lot of reviews about this game, and seen a lot of bad reviews. I don’t get it. I do not have a high end computer, and seems to run the game just fine. The load times are a bit long, but nothing that bad. Some people are complaining about the matchmaking system, I had no trouble with this. I managed to kill several players with my starter weapon. I would say my kill to death ratio was about even. I certainly did not feel like I was unable to complete my mission. Use some skill, people just want to run and gun. Stop and think, and you will have success. Also they are complaining about the payment plan being confusing. Can they read English, it is pretty simple. The social zone is free. When you purchase the game you get 50 hours of action zone play. After that you can buy unlimited play for $9.99 a month, or purchase 20 hours for $7.00. Personally, I think that is a pretty good payment model.

The only complaint I have is that the knowledge base is not working yet. Also I have no clue how I advance in the game. I found the driving a bit difficult, but that most likely has more to do with my old hand-eye coordination, then it does with the game.

Disclaimer, I have only played this game for about three hours. I had a blast; I really do not see any reason why I would not keep playing. It was very entertaining. I think a lot of the bad reviews are wrong. If an old, slow, slightly overweight (ok fat) guy like me enjoys the game, I am sure anyone can.

Last week I finally made it to level 40 on Steady Enforcer my melee tank in Champions Online. I know, it took me long enough. So I have few thoughts about leveling in Champions Online.

I do like some thinks about Champions. I enjoy the nemesis system. It is fun, and a nice addition to game play. Most of the nemesis door missions are very well done. I don’t care too much for the open world missions, but I understand that they do have to vary the missions. In general, most of the leveling door missions are well done. They usually have a pretty good story line, and are fun to play.

Costume design is another good feature. I am not someone who spends a lot of time on costumes, but this system did entertain me for longer then most.

My biggest complaint is lack of content. The game does not have enough content to level a character from 1 to 40. It is as simple as that. They have added a zone, and some repeatable content in the past few months, but it is still not enough.

Upon hitting 40, I ran the unity missions. They were not bad, pretty easy. I ran the mission at the end, again, a pretty fun mission. Here is my problem, the rewards. Most of the good unity rewards cost 1,000 unity merits. I picked up about unity 20 merits the other day on my first run. I don’t think I will do those everyday for 50 days. The missions are not that varied, and it is just too much of running the same think over and over to hold my attention.

The same holds true for the nemesis rewards. I ran every nemesis mission, and have 288 nemesis merits. Most of the good rewards cost 1,000, so that leaves running the nemesis end game mission several times in order to get a decent reward.

So I am on the fence with this game. It is OK, but not great. It certainly has not knocked City of Heroes off its perch as the top game in this genre. In fact the numbers at Xfire and Raptr show that more people are playing City, then Champions already. I am disappointed, and here is why. This is not the first superhero game that Cryptic has made. They should have learned from the mistakes they made in City of Heroes. Instead, they used none of the previous knowledge to make this game better. They just rolled out an incomplete game, and say here you go, play it. I will still play Champions; I am a junkie after all. It will just not get as much game time as other games. Hopefully they will continue to add content, and improve some of the endgame.

I am going to start listing some good AE missions that I find in City of Heroes. I am sick of AE being used as a power leveling tool. There are a lot of good missions, with some great story lines. Some of these arcs, people have put a ton of work into, and they never get played. So I am going to do my part, and try to get some of these NON-FARMING arcs noticed.

Here is a nice story arc #255146, An Internship in the Fine Art of Revenge. It has four missions level 5-30. It contains Circle of Thorns, Legacy Chain, and Wyvern. It has some nice custom bosses that fit well into the arc. It is a very smart, compact arc. No giant maps, or useless defeat all missions. Has a nice story line, and is very well done. All the missions have an ally, so it is good to run solo. I really enjoyed this arc. I ran it on level 26 stalker, on Vicious. The bosses were a bit of a challenge, but I was able to defeat them. So if you get a chance run this mission.

Just one today.

18775- City of Ho Ho Ho, or A clause in Paragon City. Three missions level 5-20, Help out Tubbius a want to be Santa Claus. The reason I liked this mission was because, Tubbius is an empathy/plant controller, and you pick him up very early in each mission. So you can take your lower level damage dealer on this arc, and turn up the difficulty a bit, because you have a built in healer along for the ride.

I have really been slacking on posting some of the better arc from mission architect. Here are a few more that are pretty good. These continue to be lower level, because these are some of the arcs we are running on Thursday nights with our mission architect ranger group. So give these arcs a try.

2180-Bricked Electronics has five missions. The best range to run these on is 8-20. Was a good story line, and was lowbie friendly. Every mission does have a boss, but very beatable. I ran this arc on a team of five, on Rugged and we did really good and got some really good xp. The last mission was very interesting, but do not want to give any spoilers here.

125526-Calling Dr. Vahziloc…..this is only a two mission arc, but worth the time to run. Both missions have large maps, with a lot of XP. We were in our low teens, running on rugged and everyone leveled twice during this arc. It is a bit challenging because of all the toxic damage that is being dealt by the Vahzilok, so make sure and pack your raincoat.

I was hoping to list a few of these every Friday, but I have been off my game a bit the past few weeks. So her are a few good ones that I ran across in the past week. They are lower level missions. So have fun running them.

One of this week’s picks is arc # 110262, The Sports Force Five. I ran across this mission when we were running some missions with the MA Rangers the other night. The first two missions are level 1-14, and the last three are 10-14. This arc has a few very original features. I do not want to give any spoilers here, but be alert at all times on this arc, it has a few surprises. The NPC chatter is just hilarious, and had me laughing as we went along. So if you get a chance, run this arc, it is a lot of fun…..

Another arc we ran across the other night on the MA Rangers was arc # 156385, Skulls for Breakfast. This is just a two mission arc, level 1-14. This is a very good low level arc. It does not contain any bosses, and has a pretty good sized map. We ran it with our level one ranger team, and when we were finished with the arc, we were level 4. So a very nice starter arc for that level one character. Because it does not have any bosses, is very doable for lower level characters.

Just a quick recap of the 5th anniversary event on City of Heroes. It was a lot of fun. Basically it was 12 hours of Giant Monsters, and Arch Villains spawning all over the place. I just hung out in Atlas killing anything that came along. Was funny seeing some of the Giant Monsters like Jack in Irons in the middle of Atlas Park. I myself had a twenty minute rumble with Ms. Ghost Widow in Steel Canyon on the Liberty server. She won by the way, like always. The Ski slope was open, I never made it there. I will never get those badges. I also heard that on the Test Server that some of the Devs were in Pocket D with a few of their Arch Villain Friends. So it was a good event, just the right length, about twelve hours, and very well done.

I was very surprised that they are already putting out some details on Issue 15.

Issue 15 Details

Usually it is a few months after a new issue is released, that we hear any details about the next one. Does not look like much, new Task/Strike Force, new costume pieces, and some updates to the Mission Architect. I hope they improve the search function on the MA, so you can search for missions by level. The issue looks pretty slim. (lol, easy for me to say, I sure it is still a lot of work).

So that leads me to a few most likely controversial theories about City of Heroes. Come on, I am a blogger, I have to stir the pot a bit. Like Fusionette says in the Save to the World Arc, “What, you knew I had to be here”. I am saying, you know I have to have a theory or two, so here they are.

Competition makes for a better game. We are hearing about Issue 15 so soon because Champions is about to make an appearance in the MMO market. So City of Heroes is going to step it up a bit to keep their player base. Good, works for me.

In a lot of the interviews, I have seen Mr. Miller do this week, he is often asked, what are you working on next. The answer has been. Will half the team is working on the next issue, the other half is working on future content. So here is my theory. Issue 15 is pretty slim, so what in the world is the other half working on. City of Heroes II, I think not, to put out a whole new game, in this MMO market, not a good idea. So I think they are going to raise the cap from 50 to 60. I know, they have always denied that they would never raise the cap. That was when they had the super hero MMO market all to themselves. Now it is a different story, so I think they will raise the cap. Now the next question is, will they charge the customer for it, like World of Warcraft.

Ok, so that is my crazy theory of the day. It could be totally out of line, so now let me return to the real world.

Announcing the formation of a new unit inside, the combat engineers/moonbase hero organization. This new unit will be called the Mission Architect Rangers. Beginning on Friday may 9th, at 19:30 CST, until 21:30 CST, (7:30 to 9:30 for you civilians) will be meeting every other Friday. (on the Liberty Server, is just less crowded there). This unit will be attempting to level from 1-50 using only the Mission Architect missions.

This highly trained unit will not be engaging in any cowardly activities like farming, or power leveling. This unit will be will be kicking some @#!&. We will be posting a progress report in the forums after each @#$% kicking, so if any members are AWOL (absent without leave), they can catch their sorry @#$%, up and join the battle the next time the MA Rangers meet. Depending on how many soldiers we have show up each session, we might have to break up into several squads, and just take over paragon city.

So make a new solider, and meet at the AE building in Atlas park on 5/09/09 ready to send whatever is attacking Paragon city back to where it came from.

So please sign up below if you are interested in joining this highly secretive unit. So we can have enough beans and bullets on hand to kick some @##$.

The baddest of the bad(ugly too) will be leading this elite unit. Steady General, an Ice/Energy tank will be leading the way.

Sign up for Mission Architect Rangers

Each Friday, I am going to try to list a few arcs that I found that week while running MA missions in City of Heroes that I liked, and you should go give them a try. I will base them on a few things, but first, what I will not base them on. I will never list an all boss farm here. I mean really people, thousands of new missions, and we have to make stupid farming maps. I mean what is the hurry; there is no large, end-game raid here. Half the fun of City of Heroes is what you do getting to level 50, not how fast you get there. OK, getting off my soapbox, enough of how stupid farming is, back to what I will base my MA arc picks of the week on. Also keep in mind, that the owners of these arcs, can unpublish them at any time. So if you go looking for them, and they are gone, not much I can do about it. Also, I am going to keep the descriptions, pretty general. I do not want to spoil anyone’s fun, if they run the missions.

So here is what I am looking for.

1. Is it balanced, or more wisely put, can this arc be finished with a reasonable amount of effort. Otherwise, it is not filled with unbeatable EB’s and AV’s. Don’t get me wrong, I like a mission to be challenging. Nothing wrong with that, I just don’t want it to turn into an episode of Mission Impossible.

2. Was it fun to run? Easy enough, did it entertain me.

3. Decent XP, not farming XP, but a good balance.

So with that in mind, here are this weeks picks, for some reason they have a disco theme this week.

Arc # 84420, Death to Disco. Was a very fun arc to run. It is two missions long, first one is lvl 30-54, the second is 1-54. The basic ideal is to stop Dr. Disco Fever from spreading disco music. It has crey, in the first mission, and a really funny custom group in the second mission. Disco Queen, and Disco Granny are trying to help Dr. Disco Fever spread the word. This is a very well done arc, that is a lot of fun. The custom groups did give me a bit of a fight, so they were not pushovers.

Arc# 111179, My Daddy’s Records, by Rick James( lol, yes that is the publishers global, pretty funny). This is just one mission, level 45-54. It is simply a good mission to run for some pretty good XP. It is a kill-all, on a good sized map, with a good custom group. It has a boss, which was a bit of a challenge, but was beatable. So if you a looking for a good mission, with good xp, this is the one. In fact my Dual Blades/Willpower scrapper hit level 50 on this mission.

So give these arcs a try, and remember stop farming, have fun, no need to hurry