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Variety of /played time

5 Nov

My gaming time has taken a nosedive lately, which is kinda sad for me since a couple of my IRL friends have recently re-subscribed to EQ2, so I’m hoping to be able to play that game a bit more with them in the near future.  Still and all, I finally managed to get a good chest armor piece for my SK from Vigilant: The Rescue (aka Vig3).  Sadly, it was due to being in a well-geared group that didn’t care about that piece as anything other than transmuter fodder, so they kindly let me snag it on a need roll to pass to the SK via the bank.

Still… considering how little I’ve actually played my SK as a tank since hitting 90, she’s actually rather decently geared.  I even went nuts a week or so ago and dropped a ton of plat on the level 88 adornments, so now when I’m in defense stance I have 63.5% mitigation, 63.8% avoidance, and over 18,000 HP.  I know that those numbers cane be pushed a lot higher too, though.  Even before the adornments, a friend had me tank the x2 in the Hole, and there was that level 86 x4 quest mob in there too, which I also tanked.  This friend is in a raid guild, so he and his guildies he brought along were very nicely geared up and thus when they buffed me up…. well, let’s just say I didn’t ever lose aggro, nor was I ever out of the green in my health.  In spite of the fact that we 1-grouped the x2, and we 9-manned the x4.  Mitigation was pushing 70% and avoidance was well over it.  I could actually have my Unholy Blessing reactive time out after 24 seconds and only have used 3 of its 5 procs up, so I wasn’t getting hit all that much, or that hard.  It was a fun time.

The x2 dropped a couple of healer pieces, that in spite of only being “Legendary” were still very nice.  The x4 dropped stuff we saw drop from trash mobs earlier.  It was a quest mob — the surprise was that it dropped anything, really.

I haven’t done much in EVE since the post about the big fleet prior to this one.  I actually went for a 2 week stretch where I didn’t log in at all, and this past week I’ve only logged in 3x, and then just to do my PI for the corp.  and I couldn’t even do that one of the times since Pandemic Legion has decided to start roaming the NC areas and so I had a couple of reds in-system with me.  They were reported as camping one of the gates, but I’m still not going to undock an unarmed industrial ship when 2 reds in T3 cruisers are in-system, even if it is just my PI alt with a with 1.5 million SP and no implants.  Why give out a free killmail?

I’ve actually started doing a bit more DDO.  I haven’t followed it all that closely, so I wasn’t “right on it” when the latest big patch was put out, but a corpmate in EVE (fellow blogger Toldain, actually) mentioned he’s got a guild on the Ghallanda server, and I actually hadn’t played on that server, so it was a good excuse to go work some favor for free Turbine Points.  Except they added the Half-Orc and Half-Elf races now, and even bundled they still were a lot more TP than I could get in any “reasonable” time frame, so I dropped a bit of cash in order to buy them.

The half-orc race itself isn’t any big deal on paper.  At the most shallow level it’s a dwarf with a bonus to STR instead of to CON.   It’s the enhancements for the race that really help it to shine.  The half-orc fury that grants a +2 STR when below 50% HP is fun, the aptitude with 2-handed weapons that adds a +2 to damage when using them….. it’s very nice on the Barbarian that I made.  I also made a cleric, since with no penalty to WIS a Half-Orc doesn’t have any trouble being one.  I haven’t spec’d him for 2H battle-cleric-ness though.  I can re-spec the enhancements easily enough if I need to, though.  I tried a bard, in spite of the CHA penalty, thinking it would make a nice “buffbot” but since I was already making a Half-Elf pure bard, I decided that a “horc” battle-buffer wasn’t going to be in the cards.

I also made a STR-based monk and am also going the Thief-Acrobat splash route to make it a 2H staff user to take advantage of the horc enhancement on that.  So far at level 4 (love that vet status) I’m doing a surprising amount of damage with the staff.  It helps that I was able to get a staff with the “stunning +4″ attribute.  It’s only a 3% stun chance, but for now I’m using the wind stance for faster attacks, so with firing them off so often, I still get quite a few stuns in without even trying.  So overall… I VERY much like the race, in spite of its lack of “flair” on paper.

I’ve also been playing around with the Half-Elf race and their “dilettante” feat.  It’s kinda weirdly implemented.  For example, a non-caster that takes the dilettante feat of a caster class can use the wands that that class would use, but not their scrolls.  Or the fighter dilly feat says it grants all the martial weapon proficiencies, yet it doesn’t grant the ability to use a longbow — gotta take the ranger dilly feat for that (which only grants the ranged feats, as well as a lesser bow strength feat).

Still and all, I’ve wound up with 2 toons that I’m liking so far.  The 1st is a pure bard that’s going the Spellsinger route, due to a preponderance of casters in the guild.  I took the fighter dilly feat thinking I’d use a longbow from the back, and perhaps even try to work in the Arcane Archer enhancements, but… no go there.  Once the bug that doesn’t allow swapping of the dilettante feat is fixed I may swap it to ranger, but as it is, I do okay with a scimitar and light shield.  Yes, 5% arcane failure chance from the shield, but I’ve only seen 1 failure so far, and in the low levels that 4 AC from the +3 shield is huge.  I also have a 2H sword that I use as well and it doesn’t have spell failure.  If I swap to ranger dilly I won’t be able to use it anymore.  We’ll see how it goes.

The last toon is a sorcerer that took the favored soul dilettante feat.  This allows it the use of divine wands for self-healing.  Yes, a non-warforged sorcerer with self-heals that doesn’t need UMD.  how cool is that?  I’m taking UMD anyway, since in the higher levels I’ll want scrolls instead of wands, but in the lower levels, the wands are a godsend.

I’ve also been talked in to installing xfire.  Most of the people in the Ghallanda guild use it for their voice chat, so I’ve got it now as well.  I don’t intend to really track my gameplay stats or anything, but I have noted that in spite of how much this post is gushing over DDO and the new races and character builds possible with them, EQ2 is still the game with the most /played time since I installed the app.  Go figure.

What have y’all been playing?

General Musings

8 Sep

EQ2:  Just had a double XP weekend.  Every xp type was doubled, so using the AA slider to convert combat xp to AA xp made for some interesting gains — quests in a level range to normally give 5-6% were giving 22-35%.  I am not complaining in any way…. I set my sliders pretty high since AA seems to come so much slower than leveling xp.  If anything, I am complaining I only got to play maybe 3 or 4 hours over the weekend :(   Still… I got almost 40 AA’s on my warlock — enough to get her the Shadows endlines.  I only wish I’d had more time to play on my inquisitor — I only got about 15 AA’s for that character, but would have loved to get a lot more.  Such is life.

EVE:  I took a break for the weekend to focus on EQ2 instead.  Fortunately we’re at the beginning of the month, so I’ll be able to make up the difference on my PI quota well before the end of the month.  The downside of having the PI quota though, is that I don’t really log in for fleet/gang ops, since I know I’ll be spending 45+ minutes each day doing PI, so I just don’t bother otherwise.  Add in that in my region of space an new alliance is taking over, so the jump bridges aren’t back in place yet, so getting to where the action is is a little tough right now and. . . well, there ya go.

LOTRO:  I got a 1 week beta key a few weeks ago, and it was fun enough and didn’t feel overly restrictive in the F2P area.  I got an email the other day saying I could log in for the head start today, but when I click the link in the email it errors out.  Not really confidence inspiring, especially given the buggy state of their points store while I was in the beta.

DDO:  I keep forgetting to log in for my Tuesday night guild run, and I’m focused enough on EQ2 right now that I’m not really playing at any other time either.  I have been working a little bit on my monk, and also I started a Rogue/Ranger with the plan to use the “Exploiter” build, but as an Elf using scimitars, rather than a Human using Khopeshes.  I’ve got it to level 6 now (1 rogue, 5 ranger) so in 1 more level I get to take my Tempest prestige class.  Perhaps I’ll even start dual-wielding then.  Up until now I’ve been enjoying the high armor class I’ve got from having a good shield.  I’m told that the “sword ‘n board” style is actually fairly comparable to dual wielding up until about level 12 anymore, so. . . .we’ll see.  Now if only they could steal EQ2′s broker system and the Profit UI’s market functions for it.

Free Realms:  My kids love this game, so I bought them a 3-month sub back at the beginning of the summer.  They went home about a month ago and it hasn’t been touched since.  Which is kinda odd, becuz I actually do find it a relaxing escape every once in a while, but…. too many other games to play and things to do, I suppose.

SWTOR’s Hype: Hopefully the game lives up to it, but from what I’ve seen from their press releases and from people blogging about it, there are going to be a ton of unmet hopes/dreams/expectations.  I don’t really think it will be fair since it seems that so many people are building it up in their own minds as the “WoW Killer” and when they find it’s going to be “just another MMO” I think there will be a lot of backlash… and for no reason other than people worked themselves up, not becuz the game won’t be fun.  It just won’t be exactly as they dreamed.  I know I’m looking forward to it, and as a result I’ve tried to avoid the hype lately.  I’m trying to go into it without any preconceived notions about it being the next best thing.

Warhammer:  I have the “unlimited trial” installed, but I forget it’s there.  And frankly, I haven’t even gotten any character up to the “cap” for the trial yet.  I don’t know why, I don’t feel like anything’s “wrong” with it, and I LOVE the public quests.  I guess it just doesn’t feel like anything sets it apart from any other fantasy-themed MMO.

And there ya have it….. random musings on the MMO scene.

Adventures in Eberron

21 May

A few months back, Ardwulf posted on his blog that he’d like to set up a “static group” to play DDO on Tuesday nights.  Quite a few of his readers (including me) responded, and so most every Tuesday since then the Disciples of Tharizdun guild has been terrorizing orcs and kobolds and bugbears (oh my!) as well as destroying a bunch of undead.  Most of us are in the level 5-6 range now, though one of use who doesn’t tend to be on as much is still level 4, and lately I’ve been playing a bit more so I’m level 7 on my “main” and have also worked up 2 characters to level 5.

It’s been an interesting experience.  DDO is quite unlike any other MMO I’ve played.  It’s combat style is far more action-oriented, with monsters running around, dodging your attacks, backing up out of range only to spring back in, etc.  As a result, it can feel quite frenetic at times, especially since you also are trying to dodge their blows, get to their sides or rear to gain bonuses to hit, etc.  Oddly, this makes the “pure melee” classes more or less the easiest to play — they really only have to auto-attack, so you can focus on your movement.  The healers and arcane casters have it a bit tougher since all that movement is in there plus either hitting hotkeys or trying to click on your spells whilst doing it.  Well… at least while solo.  In groups the casters tend to hang back a bot and focus more on either healing the group or picking off individual mobs, perhaps taking out enemy casters 1st, and so on.

We’ve been focused on the free to play parts so far, but most of us have bought the Catacombs adventure pack with points accumulated from favor gains we’ve made so far.   We’re fairly balanced in the group with a cleric, bard, me as a rogue/wizard, a barbarian, a fighter/rogue, and whoever shows up for the 6th group slot.  Sometimes it’s a wizard, sometimes it’s another barbarian, you never know who’s available on a Tuesday night.

For myself though, I have purchased all the content packs through “mid-level” as well as all the classes and races.  I’m finding that I simply love the warforged race.  Not needing to worry about armor or breathing (or poison, or disease, etc) is kinda nice.  They make excellent barbarians due to not being fatigued once the Rage wears off.  But anyway…. as a result of having purchased the additional content I get invited to groups on my rogue/wizard quite a lot so I’m not “stuck soloing” all the time.  It’s kinda funny, really — I get invited to groups more often due to my 1 rogue level than my 6 wizard levels.  Oh sure, they like the buffs and damage I provide, but the rogue ability to find and disarm traps is why I’m really along, most times.

Sadly, the last group I was invited to as a rogue I was not quite up to snuff.  It was a 4-quest chain that started level 7, but finished at level 9.  Me being at level 7, I just couldn’t find the traps in the level 9 adventures.  I’m told they have a difficulty of 24 to see them, and well…. my search skill is 9 (2 under the max for level), I had Heroism cast on me making it 11.  I used my +2 skill ability making it 13.  And I had a +6 from my Intelligence score, making it 19, and I had a +3 search item equipped, making it. . . . .22.  Short by 2 — the 2 I didn’t put in on my skills.  Now I know better for the future to keep Search maxed, ya know?  According to the forums I should have a +7 search item also, but I’ve not seen any on the auction house and don’t have a clue where I’d find one from adventuring.  As it is, I’m rather close to level 8, so I’ll catch it up then.

Level 8 should also be exciting since I will then gain the ability to cast 4th level spells.  I’m told the Wall of Fire spell will make me a soloing god, so… time will tell on that.

Do any of our readers here also play DDO?

Soloing vs Grouping

15 May

My 1st MMO was SWG back in 2003.  I was married with 3 kids, working full time, and going to school full time also, so my time was pretty limited, and generally pretty late at night.  Opportunities for grouping were semi-rare, in spite of being in a “player association” with a lot of co-workers and their significant others.  They were usually in bed by the time I got home from school, after all, and if I played for an hour in an evening before going to bed, that was a lot.  As a result, I became quite familiar with “the solo game” and frankly, it bored me.  Some IRL changes happened and I became able to play during “prime time” and group up a lot more and I found the game to be ever so much more fun then.  And yet, when I was grinding xp for new skill boxes, I was nearly always doing that solo.

I eventually moved on to EQ2.  When the game 1st came out, you needed to group a lot because it was designed along that model.  Soloing was possible, but it was also a PITA and there was quite a lot of content you simply *had* to group for.  Over time, this changed and now the game is largely “solo outdoors, group indoors.”  And in thinking back on it, I think that while my attitude has gone through various revisions and changes, it can be summed up overall as “I like to level solo, but I like to *play* in groups.”  Part of that is, I think, that EQ2 is largely structured with a lot of quests designed to get you leveled up, but then once you are leveled up you want gear, not xp, and gear is found in group instances, not doing quests.  But I also think that part of it is that once you are leveled up and “equal” with other people playing that grouping “feels” more viable, especially if everyone’s working to “gear up” and improve and doing their best.

I find this to hold true in EVE also.  Sure, I can fly battleships and do level 4 missions for 3 of the 4 empires now, and I was and am happy to have “leveled that up” by myself.  But the best times I’ve had in EVE have been on “corp night” when we’d get a frigate swarm together and go rampaging through lowsec space, exploring, finding POS’s, scaring the locals, clearing rats out of asteroid belts since the locals fled once we showed in the local comm channel…. We never saw another player in that time, but we had a blast regardless.

And now I find myself playing DDO more and more.  I’ve played it off and on since it went F2P, but never really got past level 3 on most characters.  It doesn’t have a clear progression in-game, though I’m sure if I just went and looked it up I could find it easily enough, and so with not really knowing or caring where to go, I just never went anywhere.   But then a blogger indicated interest in making a “static group” and playing once a week and so I joined that group/guild and it’s been a blast.  Not only that, but since getting my character in to the mid-levels and am getting invited to groups and dungeons I’ve never been to before since I’m a “support class” that is needed in most of these groups.  I’m actually starting to outlevel the guild group and need to cut back on that a bit . . . .   But still… I’m having a blast in a group, while solo is still kinda meh to me.

Thing about all these games is that on their forums, the desire to solo from start to finish (finish being self-defined in EVE, of course) is an oft-expressed, probably most-expressed, desire.  And I’m right there with them — I *want* to be able to solo the whole game if I choose.  This doesn’t make any sense to me, though.  I know from my experience that I vastly prefer to be in a group rather than solo, so why would I have the deisre to have solo content available at all levels?  Why the insistence on “playing alone together?”

Perhaps it’s the IRL thing stepping in — MMO’s don’t have a pause button after all, and if I need to go AFK, I don’t want other people to have to wait on me.  If I’m solo, I can step away, even if it means a death, and no one is affected but me.  In my case, I’d have to say that’s most of it, really.  That’s why I’m on the blog right now rather than playing anything — it’s my night with the baby and she’s till semi-unpredictable as to how long she’ll be asleep for, so I don’t feel like I can commit to a group since I might be called away at any moment.  But if I were playing solo, then if I had to go feed a baby, it wouldn’t be a problem at all — I’d just go do it.

Any thoughts from any of you as to other reasons why you’d want to be able to solo at any time no matter what?

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Comfort Zones — stuck in them?

9 May

Ever since DDO went free-to-play, I’ve had it installed and occasionally have bounced in and out of it.  I didn’t know anyone who played, though, and didn’t play it often enough to feel like I’d really be contributing to a guild, so when I played I was always looking for a good solo-capable character.  I bought a few points and unlocked all the races and classes, and kept trying to make different classes that were thought to be “really good soloers” according to their forums.  I got to know the starting area of Korthos Island really well, as well as most of the Stormreach Harbor.  Managed to get 2 characters up to level 4 solo and the cleric got asked to be in a Waterworks group and made level 5 there, but never really went into the Marketplace to do the quests there.  I tried a few forays in to the Cerulean Hills, but didn’t really feel like there was much there beyond that 1 quest line.  And since I was so comfortable in Korthos and the Harbor and kept rolling and re-rolling new characters, I developed quite a comfort zone for those areas and just didn’t ever leave them.  And I got bored and stopped really playing DDO at all as a result.

Then a few months ago Ardwulf started up a static group on Tuesday nights and I’ve been playing more or less each week with them.  Due to not always making it each week I sometimes have to play a little “catch up” for the next week in order to stay in level range of the rest of the group, and while I’ve done a few forays in to some of the level 4 or higher content, I still find myself largely “stuck” and not really wanting to go to the new (to me) quests, even though I know I won’t have any difficulty with them.

I find myself doing this in EQ2 also — there are still instances from 2 expansions ago that I haven’t done, much less the prior one and now the current one.  In the current one I’ve done most of them, at least — the quest lines send you to them, at least, but I can still think of 2 that I haven’t been in, and unless a quest “forces” me to go, I don’t really want to either.  And I can’t for the life of me figure why that is.  I mean. . . I’m doing the “hardest” zones on my coercer, at least, so why wouldn’t I want to at least run through the other “easier” instances at least once, if only for the AA experience?   And why is it that while I’ve got 12 (yes, 12) characters that I don’t really find myself wanting to level any of the lower ones up anymore?  I enjoy playing them or I wouldn’t have them in my “stable,” yet I find myself thinking “don’t want to have to remember how to play THAT class when I’m used to THIS class” and there I sit in my comfort zone on my “main” again.

And even in EVE I’m doing it also.  I’ve got a 42 million SP character now, all “support skills” are trained to at least level 4, I can fly and fit Tech2 for all frigates, all destroyers, and 2 of the 4 races of cruisers, plus I can run level 4 missions in 3 of the 4 empires.  Based off this, I should be out in nullsec kicking ass and taking names in a nice corp and alliance there.  But I’m instead sitting up in hisec running a mission or 2 a week, watching the wallet grow, then spending it down again, then building it back up, etc.  Comfortable yet again . . . . .

Obviously I like variety — it’s not like these 3 games are really all that similar in their play styles at all.  I’ve got a few other games installed as well that I will probably mention from time to time too, so I think I’m definitely in the “nomadic gamer” category, and yet within that variety of games, I still am not really being all that “various,” but rather tend to do the same things over and over again rather than experience them to their fullest.

Is this a human trait, or is it just me?

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