Monday 25 September 2006

Pic of the day: The Stygian Ambassador is spreading darkness everywhere! But it is not quite as bad as it seems. (Oh, and the name "Captain Emo" was taken. Perhaps someone else from LiveJournal?)

CoH: Paladins of the Night

With my Master of Magic fad temporarily sated, or nearly so, I have spent some more time in City of Heroes again. A month or so ago, a bunch of CoH players who also have LiveJournals, decided to create a new SuperGroup. (That's like a guild, for those of you who play other MMORPGs.) They settled on Virtue, the semi-role playing server, not that it really is a strict role playing group. In any case, with a game set in the 21st century, role playing mostly restricts itself to not talking about current events in our world, which is probably a good thing anyway since most of the people there are Americans.

We settled on a dark-themed group. This does not sound like something typical of me, does it? But in CoH, darkness powers are not exclusively or even primarily used to cause hurt and pain. They are used for protection and concealment too. Near all dark powers have a side effect of making it harder for your opponent to hit. Reducing their accuracy, in other words. Sadly there are no white magic powers; perhaps the religious connotations would be too obvious. Instead there is empathy (healing and strengthening) and force fields (protection against damage). In any case, joining the SG is not a statement of sympathy for the devil, in my case.

I created a dark/dark defender (D3, as we call it after a while). These excel above all others in reducing the accuracy of enemies, and also have a good area heal and the only group resurrect in the game. Not that we have needed that often. With a whole team of Darkfriends, as it were, we are hard enough for the enemy to see at all, much less hit.

After a month, we are up to 50 people, although some of them are "alts", other characters owned by the same player. Since everyone in this community is grown-up, or nearly so, there are no elite kids who play all day and much of the night and get to 50 in a couple weeks. Even though my Stygian Ambassador mostly plays on weekends, he is still not far behind the most active players. I usually team with them every Friday and Saturday night, when I don't have work the next day. (It is near dawn here when the Americans are ready for bed.)

It also helps that most of the players know each other to some extent, from LiveJournal. It makes for a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. I guess you could compare it to a bunch of friends coming together for a pen & paper role playing evening, only more convenient. We talk about stuff, not necessarily the game although of course that occupies most of our time. And of course we learn and adapt to each other's favorite tactics. It is generally more fun and efficient than teaming with random strangers, or even more fun than playing alone.

The defenders in particular are best played in teams, since they also have a positive effect on other players nearby. In this the dark defender really is similar to the paladin in Dark Age of Camelot (and you will remember that this was by far my favorite class there). For each of these you add, all the others will do better as well. For instance, dark defenders can get "shadow fall", an aura that is wide enough to comfortably fit a team within, and which makes them harder to see and harder to hit. But these auras are cumulative, so if you have three or four of them, you get really hard to hit. There is also a power that is centered on an enemy, which makes it harder for him and all nearby enemies to hit anything. Add a couple extra of these too, and things get pretty easy. Now add the fact that our heals are all area heals, so if someone takes damage, anyone in the team can heal him (or her – we are talking LiveJournal here) without breaking off what they are already doing.

I don't know exactly how long I am going to stay with this group. I know I am going to be there next weekend too... because I am writing this next weekend. It is a time-eater, this game. But then again time goes anyway, and at least I spend it being a tiny bit social. I am sure some consider that an improvement. ^_^