#Blaugust Day 19: Scattered

We've reached that point in Blaugust where it starts to get difficult. The stored up ideas have been used and we're dependent on new ones for our posts. Tamrielo may be able to come up with a couple hundred ideas in an hour, but my mind is not so fecund. Or maybe I just self-censor too much, I know that's a problem. As much as I say that this blog is for me, I'm always aware that I have an audience and that anything I post could theoretically be viewed by anyone and everyone in the world.

Damn you brain!

Last night was a pretty light one gaming-wise. I played a little Magic Duels, long enough to knock out the daily quests I had active. One was to win 2 duels with either a blue/green or a blue/red deck, so I tried out an artifact deck based on Kodra's recently talking about how awesome they were. I won both duels, but the deck never seemed to really click. The idea is supposed to be lots of cards that spawn artifacts (mostly 1/1 flying thopters) and benefit from artifacts being in play along with cards that buff artifact creatures. Despite something like a dozen or more cards in the deck that create the thopter tokens, I never put out a single token in either game. Just bad luck of the draw, I guess.

Three in the deck and I never drew one

Apart from that, I logged into Marvel Heroes for a bit and finished up getting Thing to level 60. With that done, I looked through my stable of characters to pick the next to run up. One problem I've found with the story rebalance is that any character that completed the story on normal prior to the rebalance still has all the story quests completed post rebalance. That means I've got a few characters such as Squirrel Girl and Storm who are between level 20 and 40 that I can't use the story to level. I'll just have to go with the old legendary quest / Midtown leveling method for them I guess. It works, but it gets tiresome fast.

I ended up pulling out Deadpool, who I got as my free hero for the anniversary celebration. He's supposed to be a lot of fun to play, and his synergy bonuses are +10% each to rare item find and special item find which are useful for pretty much any character, particularly the level 60s that I'm hunting end-game gear with. I ran him through the first chapter and liked him reasonably well. I'm playing him mostly shooty so far, with AoE bombs to deal with packs of minions. They did a good job with the humor and fourth-wall breaking of his voiced lines; hopefully they won't wear thin as the game goes on.

Seriously considering picking up this costume

Finally I went offline and read for a while. I'm about a third of the way through Choke and it's as disturbing and hilarious as I expected from Palahniuk. I imagine most of my readers have seen the movie version of Fight Club (if you haven't, you really should), but a lot of you probably haven't read the book. It's well worth your time even if you've seen the movie. In fact I'd say it's even more worth it if you've seen the movie, as the differences between the two make a fascinating study in how you go about adapting a story to a new medium in a way that takes advantage of that medium.

#Blaugust Day 14: Of Vaults and Cards and Other Things

Kinda late with the blog post today. Normally I try to write them the night before and schedule to post the next morning, but a combination of gaming later than I really should have and lack of any clear notion of what to write about meant I had nothing written when I went to bed. Just means I'm writing at lunch.

Fallout Shelter finally came out for Android yesterday, so I downloaded it to see what people were going on about a month ago. It's pretty enjoyable so far, though I'm obviously still in the very early game which is often the best part in these sorts of things. We'll see if it holds up further in once leveling and finding new things slows down. I did get lucky and pull a unique dweller and a legendary weapon from my first and second lunchboxes, so I've had him out exploring the wasteland and bringing back more stuff. So far raider attacks haven't been much trouble to deal with thanks to the early infusion of armor and weapons. I did have a scare for a little where my water production fell off and my overall happiness started to tank; I managed to reassign some people and make it through though and then prioritized expanding water production once I had the caps.

My litle Vault, ticking along

Over in Marvel Heroes, I finished leveling Magneto to 60 last week and started running Thing up through the story to take advantage of an xp bonus for the Fantastic Four that was in over the weekend. I've been enjoying the Thing's gameplay more than I expected. I tend to prefer dodgy ranged characters and he's very much an in-the-thick of the action brick. His secondary resource builds when he deals or receives damage so you want to leap into the middle of a bunch of guys and start whaling away. I finished up Chapter 4 yesterday with him and have reached level 34, so again, no problem leveling in the story.

Dear Gazillion, I will pay cash money for this costume

Finally, I played a fair amount of Magic Duels last night trying to clear out a couple of quests. You can have up to 3 simultaneously and it seems you get one new one each day. I had a full load, so I wanted to get at least one completed so as not to wasted today's. One quest was to put 20 counters on creatures over the course of any number of games, and the other two were both Archetype quests, which ask you to win 4 duels with particular deck types. It's important to note that you have to make a deck using the Deck Builder for it count for those quests. I know Kodra, who's up on the current cards and meta, hates the deck builder but for me it's helpful to give me an idea of what sorts of decks are viable these days.

I ended up putting together a red/black deck built around creature sacrifices, ideally creatures stolen from my opponent, that was a lot of fun when it worked. I feel like it needs some fine tuning, as it could be brutal when things went my way, but I had a couple terrible defeats as well when the cards weren't with me. For another quest I made a blue/white air superiority deck that worked remarkably well in the duels I used it in. There the point was to overwhelm my opponent with flying creatures while handling his creatures via special abilities to tap or destroy them and a few hefty blockers.

Tomorrow I should have the first of what I hope will be many book reviews going up, and I also have an idea for another ongoing series that I plan to start up Sunday. I just have to actually get the posts written. Come back tomorrow and see if I succeed!

Blaugust Day 3: Master of Magnetism!

Marvel Heroes is another game whose developers seem to be very good at learning from their mistakes. Most recently they did away with multiple story mode difficulties. Where previously you had to run through the entire story 3 times to get all the available rewards on a particular character (most importantly power points) a single run through the story now takes you from level 1 to 60. Previously you would expect to be around level 25 the first time you fight Doctor Doom. Now you'll be nearly at the level cap when you reach Doom.

I decided to test this out by pulling out one of the characters I have unlocked but a level 1 and seeing how the leveling felt in this new system. I considered a couple of options, but ultimately decided on Magneto.

Those are some impressive guns for a 90 year old.

I played through the first 4 chapters of 9, and had hit level 33 by the time I defeated the Kingpin. Based on a little time spent in Midtown Manhattan, that seems to still be a quicker way to level, but Story mode is definitely a more viable leveling option than before.

I did notice that villains in events had a lot less health than before, resulting in super-villains often being defeated almost instantly when they appeared. On one hand, it's nice that I can complete those events by myself without it being a multi-minute slog now. I think maybe they need to be adjusted back up a little though, as it's pretty much not worth trying to get to one unless you were near it when it spawned.

As far as Magneto's gameplay, I had a lot of fun floating around hurling metal shards at people and listening to Magneto's haughty comments whenever other heroes ran by. Magneto uses 'debris' as a secondary resource for his attacks which recovers slowly over time or faster through wrecking up the place. I tend to destroy anything around in any case just for fun, so that works out well for me. I also really like the white costume they chose as his default, though if his costume from his time as Headmaster of the Xavier School ever gets added to the game, I'll be picking that up immediately.

Hello there, Ladies and Gentlemen

Welcome to any new readers that came from Massively to check me out!  I'm actually double glad Syp linked to me, as he mentioned the post that he made some years back that was my inspiration for my ability identification post!  For some reason I was misremembering it as something I saw on the LotRO forums.

I don't know how many folks might stick around and keep reading, but I've been considering a state of the gaming post in any case, so what better time?  Here's what I've been up to recently.

FFXIV

The 2.5 patch came out Monday, and for the first time I was entirely caught upon the various questlines.  I didn't really have time last night to try running any new group content, but I got everything unlocked and am ready to give some of it a try.  The Hildibrand questline continues to be the best thing ever, and I'm especially looking forward to the new Gilgamesh fight.

Apart from the new stuff, there's still plenty of existing goals that I'm still working towards.  I've leveled all my crafting and gathering classes to 50, but I still have plenty of better gear to work on so I can craft 3 and 4 star items.  I've been in a bit of a conundrum where I didn't want to spend a lot of gil melding materia into gear that isn't best in slot, but working on desynthesis has opened up my ability to craft the best jewelry for gathering and crafting, so that should help me move on up the chain.

I've also been working on my battle classes and have 3 of those at level 50.  Bard remains my main to which I've added Dragoon and Warrior.  I'll probably be focusing on White Mage or Scholar/Summoner next so I have a healer job available, but I haven't decided which yet.  I suspect I'd actually be better tanking as Paladin than Warrior, but I won the most absurd axe in the game off Titan a couple months back, and I've been wanting to use it ever since.

Dat Axe

Marvel Heroes

I've honestly not done much in Marvel Heroes recently apart from try to log on once a day to collect daily rewards.  I'm sure I'll swing back around to it again before too long, but for now FFXIV and occasional single player games are dominating my PC gaming time.

Shadow of Mordor

Among my Christmas presents this year was Shadow of Mordor, which I have been enjoying the hell out of.  I absolutely love Arkham City, so the basic gameplay is right up my alley, and the orc captains are a great element.  I had one poor idiot come back a total of 4 times, jumping me out of nowhere each time and looking rougher and rougher as it went along.  I do have trouble focusing on the story at all since I keep running into captains that need killing and Power Struggles to deal with.  I need to at least get to the point where I can brand captains so that getting them promoted actually benefits me.

FFX

Finally, I picked up the FFX/X-2 remaster recently and have been playing my way through Spira again.  I'd forgotten how dark that game is underneath the surface once you know what's actually going on.  So many things that were relatively innocuous the first time through have a whole new level of sad attached to them.  Really though, I guess Final Fantasy games have a history of darkness. mass genocide in VI, the whole Cloud/Sephiroth thing in VII, and Tactics, man don't get me started on Tactics.  It's like a Shakespearean tragedy told with Precious Moments figurines.

In any case I just wrapped things up in Luca and am headed out on the Mi'hen Highroad.  X is one of the Final Fantasy games that I not only beat but pretty much burned to the ground content-wise the first time around, so it's interesting seeing what all I remember and deciding how in depth I'm going to go.  I have a hard time not collecting all the things, but I don't know if I'm going to be willing to put forth the effort this time around to, for instance, get Lulu's final weapon.

So Many Games

Well, Destiny is out and it seems like everyone is busy with that.  Apparently it's already sold enough to turn a profit, so I'm sure we can expect to see a glut of class-based FPS MMO thingies in the near future.  Me, I'm not all that interested.  I've got more games than I know what to do with as it is, and shooters just aren't at the top of my list.  Ask me again if I ever get around to finishing Borderlands 2.

Hack 'n' Slash also launched, or at least came out of Early Access, and that's much more my cup of tea.  Even if I wasn't an inveterate Double Fine fan at this point, a Zelda-like game where you modify the monsters and environment to solve puzzles scratches about three different itches all at once.  I haven't had time to actually play it yet, but I'm hoping to spend some time with is this weekend.

I haven't played much Marvel Heroes the past couple weeks.  Only so many hours in the day, and FFXIV has been monopolizing my online gaming time.  I'm sure I'll dial back on it here in a bit, but for now I have more leveling to do, and storyline to see.  I still have an 8-man mission sitting in the road staring at me, but I'm sure I'll get that done in the next couple of days.

Finally, I picked up John Scalzi's new novel, Lock-In.  I've been following his blog for years and moved from that to his novels, starting with Old Man's War.  He's often compared favorably with Heinlein, and I can't argue.  He's got a real knack for writing compelling science fiction that's thoughtful without sacrificing accessibility and excitement.  I'm about 2/3 of the way in, and there's a good chance I may just have to power on through before I go to sleep tonight.  Everything's starting to come together, and I need to know how it all turns out.

Advice for the new Marvel Heroes player

Today, some tips for those new to Marvel Heroes.  Just some various bits of advice I've picked up during my time playing.

• Getting heroes to certain milestones gives you a bonus to xp on all your heroes.  The first hero you get to level 60 increases xp earned by 30%, the second by another 20, then 15 more for 3, etc up to a maximum of 200%.  So getting your first hero to level 60 will make leveling a second one that much faster.

• There is no way to delete your starting hero and pick another one.  If you decide you just can't stand the hero you picked and must try again, you can create a new account and pick a new hero that way.  All the starting heroes are at least decent, and it doesn't take long to earn enough eternity splinters to buy a new one, so I recommend sticking it out in that situation.

• In general you're best off either maxing out a power or putting just a single point in it.  At level 60 you can put 20 points in a power, and you have 162 points available if you've done all the story quests.  Also, your starting powers have 1 point each in them to begin with.  So that means you can max out 8 powers and have enough additional points to put 1 each in around 6 others.

• Every hero has both active and passive powers.  Passive powers give an always on benefit, so it's nearly always worth it to put at least 1 point in each passive you have access to.  

• Every hero has a way to apply the weakness and vulnerability debuffs to enemies.  Weakness decreases the damage they deal by 10%, vulnerability increases damage they take by 10%.  Often theses debuffs are attached to one of your attacks.  It's worth seeing which powers apply them.  Often it's worth putting a single point in these powers even if you aren't interested in them for damage so that you can apply those debuffs.

• Enemies drop orbs a lot.  Red are health, blue are spirit (mana), purple give both.  Green are xp.  Orbs do disappear if you don't grab them quickly, especially the xp orbs.  Saving civilians often gets you a bunch of bonus xp orbs.  For example, click on the hostages in the prologue bank heist mission to free them and get a bunch of bonus xp.

• Orange instance portals are treasure rooms.  Every zone map has two active at any time.  Inside will be some champion level enemies and a chest containing xp orbs and some loot.

• Gear you don't need should be donated to the vendors in the chapter hubs (Avengers Tower, the X-Mansion, or SHIELD Helicarrier).  Vendors level up from donations, up to a level of 20, offering more and better options with each level.  I recommend focusing on the crafter first, as that has ways to upgrade your blue gear to purple fairly cheap, and needs to be level 10 for you to make use of costume cores once you reach level 30.  Next, level up the enchanter, who lets you use runes to enchant your gear.  Mostly enchanting is a thing to do at max level, but you will get an uru item and a couple of runes as a login gift pretty early on.  You can use those to create the Seer's Brilliance runeword which gives you an xp bonus and some bonus health.

• Gear can grant a power at a certain rank, or it can increase your current rank in a power by a certain amount.  Gear that grants a power will set your level in that power to that particular rank unless you already have a higher rank in it.  This happens even with 0 points spent in the power.  This is a great way to test out powers without having to spend points in them.  Gear that increases your current rank adds additional points to that power on top of what you've spent in it.  You must have at least 1 point spent in the power though.  If you have 0 points in a power, gear that increase rank will have no effect.

Catch-all catch-up

I haven't slept yet, it's not tomorrow until I sleep.  We had friends over for dinner tonight and got into long conversation, so they didn't head out until just now.  Silly me, I didn't think to write a blog post beforehand, so here we are.

Pokemon Yellow continues to be a thing.  I've earned the Boulder Badge and made my way into Mt. Moon.  I've caught a Zubat and Geodude, still looking for a Paras and a Clefairy.  I need to check my copy of Pokemon Red (where I finished the game) to see which fossil Pokemon I chose there so I can grab the other one in yellow.  I should check my Eevee evolution there too.  Pretty sure I went with Flareon, but I'm not 100% certain.

Marvel Heroes has been my main online game; the Guardians of the Galaxy related event followed by the Cosmic Chaos event have been fun. I ended up picking up a few of the cosmic boxes and unlocked Black Panther and Moon Knight as well as some costumes.  Now they have an event called A.R.M.O.R. Incursion where you can collect drops to trade in to Jocasta for interesting gear. Dunno if I'll collect enough to get anything good, but it's something to shoot for.

Tomorrow my semi-monthly Deathwatch campaign is meeting, so I doubt I'll do much if any PC gaming.  I should have a good story of Space Marines fighting back xenos in the Emperor's name, however.  Hopefully our Librarian won't fail his Perils of the Warp roll and get us all murdered by a Daemon Prince.

Optimization vs Fun

The other day I began working on a new character in Marvel Heroes.  I immediately went to the forums and looked for a build for that character.  Looking through the first few pages, I didn't find anything current for that hero; a recent patch had changed some powers around and builds hadn't been updated to take it into account yet.  I was annoyed; how would I know where to spend my points leveling up?  Then I stopped and thought.

Why was it so important for me to find a build to copy?  The powers are well described, and I can actually try them myself and see what feels good to me.  If I end up gimping my character I can always respec.  I used to play games without turning to guides.  Back before the internet was a thing, that was the default.  You couldn't just go to gamefaqs or a game's forums to get help, you either plugged away and solved it yourself, bought a hint guide (if there was one) or called a long distance hint line.

It's human nature to want to do things correctly, and to look for the optimal solution.  But sometimes I wonder if we're sacrificing our own fun to do it.  Noone plays tic-tac-toe for fun because the game has been solved.  The optimal solution is known, so there's no challenge and no choice.  Any game without a random element is subject to that; presumably chess will one day be solved in the same way when we have sufficient computing power.

I wonder if that's part of why adventure games died out.  How much fun is an adventure game if you can look up the puzzles anytime you're stuck?  It's so easy to do now, there's nothing preventing it but your own self-control.  I recall how proud I was when I finally finished Planetfall, oh so many years ago.  One puzzle in particular had me stuck for hours, trying to figure out what to do next.  Would finally succeeding have meant anything if I had looked up an answer somewhere instead of figuring it out on my own?

In the end, I abandoned my search for a build and assigned points on my own.  Maybe it's not optimal, but so far I'm having fun with the character.  And really, shouldn't it be about the fun?

Marvel Heroes

Yesterday I talked about the Guardians of the Galaxy movie and how much I, a huge Marvel fan, enjoyed it.  Well apparently I'm not alone; the movie has set a new record for August openings.  I'd be overjoyed to see it hold onto the number one spot next weekend over Michael Bay's upcoming travesty.  In any case, today we're going to talk about a game that lets you play as Star-Lord or Rocket Raccoon (with the rest of the team as available sidekicks), Marvel Heroes!

I guess it's officially 'Marvel Heroes 2015' now, but whatever.  This is a game that had a rough start, and aggressively mediocre reviews starting out.  I didn't even bother giving it a shot until it had been out for 4 or 5 months, and then only because a friend was really talking it up.  I think part of the problem was that Marvel Heroes was marketed as an MMO.  It's not; not in the traditional sense.  When you get down to it, Marvel Heroes is a Marvel-themed Diablo II.  It's online-only, and gets content updates (new characters especially) on a regular basis, like an MMO, but the gameplay is ARPG all the way.

So to start with, Marvel Heroes is as much fun as you'd expect Diablo with superheroes to be.  Flashy superpowers, fights against classic villains, and a surprisingly good storyline.  Opponents can get a little samey on occasion (Savage Land, I'm looking at you), but there's a pretty good range of villains over the course of the game.

Also, Marvel Heroes has one of the better free-to-play setups I've seen.  Gameplay isn't gated at all; no having to pay for quest packs or any of that.  Characters can be bought in the store, or earned by collecting a resource called Eternity Splinters during normal gameplay.  About 22 hours of play will get you enough splinters to buy a new random hero, or you can save up more to buy a specific hero.  XP and item boosts are purchasable of course, though you don't really need them to feel like leveling and drop rates are rewarding.

The big money is in costumes and bank space.  Bank space is, last I checked, the only thing that is only purchasable with cash.  I've bought a few because I'm a pack-rat.  If you don't hold onto every little thing like me, you can go a long way with just the freely available space.  Costumes can drop, but they're absurdly rare.  I've yet to get one as a drop.  Also there's so many that the chance of the one you really want dropping for you is pretty much nil.  So if you want a specific look other than the default for one of your characters you'll need to spend a few bucks.  That said, costumes are cosmetic only and to my mind that's the ideal thing for a cash store to sell.

If you like Diablo-style gameplay and superheroes, you owe it yourself to give Marvel Heroes a shot.  If you do, let me know what you think.  I'll be interested to hear some other opinions.