Mhari and I are doing okay other than my being tired. Mhari has started an exercise program, which seems to slowly be starting to pay off with a little more energy for walking. We’ll see how it goes longer term. As for myself, I get a LOT of walking in on any day I go into the office, as I am getting off BART 2 stations past where I need to, and walking back to the office. And then at the end of the day, I walk back to the that station rather than going to a closer one. And on my lunch break I walk 1/2 to 1 mile as part of things.
However, on the flip side, I am not getting to bed as early as I should. I did better last night, but I don’t feel it much. I’m not sleeping well due to heat trapped in the apartment from the warm to hot days we have been having. And fans, while they move the air, don’t really get rid of it. I really need to rig a fan into my window and set it up as an exhaust fan for this sort of thing. That would help.
On with other things…
City of Heroes, Issue 15, has gone into Open Beta on the CoH Test Server. I am unimpressed. This one is tiny. There’s a bunch of changes to Architect badges to prevent some abuse of the Architect that they were linked to. Those badges encouraged certain types of activity in the player-made missions that was not conducive to what was intended for the system. They made there be rewards for things that people who where not as actively constructively creative had to seek other ways to receive. So it promoted things like building ‘farming’ missions for various things. And it caused a great deal of friction in the community in the process.
I think the changes they did were needed. I know -I- was getting driven away from AE missions (or MA missions, if you will). Partly because the number of farming missions that were being written and how they mask the good missions due to needle in a haystack issues in finding the good missions. And the other reason was because of the manner of some of the people hanging out in AE for farming purposes. They were often rude and seemed to figure that if you were there, you were also trying to find a team to farm with.
As to the rest of Issue 15… meh. There is a new Task Force (for heroes) and a new Strike Force (for villains). Both are for levels 45-50. And require 4 players. I really shouldn’t complain about these, as they ARE new content, and from what talk there is about them, my friend Bruce Harlick is the main writer/driver on them. That should make them VERY good. And I DO look forward to playing them.
The other addition to the game is a ‘toolkit’ for people testing their AE missions. Again, I will likely find this useful and I look forward to using the tools.
However, other than the changes to the badges, those two high level Task/Strike Forces, the toolkit stuff for AE/MA (as well as a few new maps, a level selector and some other MA tuning), some Arena changes and the usual small slew of power adjustments… this issue is darned bare of anything of interest.
There are no new power sets, no new archetypes, no new low- or mid-level content, no new invention sets, no new zones, nothing ‘large’. Yes, all the little things taken together, when to add them all up do amount to a fair number of good things. But it feels… lacking. Especially called ‘Anniversary’. Of course, if they release it to the live servers at the end of June, I can always call it a wedding anniversary present for my wife and I.
My bet is that this is so ‘light’ because of there being ‘Going Rogue’ as the ‘Next Big Thing’ and all their main focus is likely on that new ‘faction’. It sounds like as much work as City of Villains was. THAT I am looking forward to… in a major way.
On other things… I am playing Fallout 3 as my ‘gotta play something different so as not to burn out’ game. I am enjoying it!
Well, that’s it for me. I better get to work and get the day over with so I can get what weekend I can. Have a good one, folks, and thanks for reading.
Jethric's Mess 