CoH - Stone Tank Build

For the first time in months, another build of my CoH characters. Like previous posts, this avatar is, well, still not completely slotted. I've got some changes to make. This posting though, is not at all like my other builds that I've put online.

One of the objectives I try to accomplish with my avatars is what I call practical builds. When I IO slot an avatar, I try to only use IO's that a casual player has a hope of getting. So I generally don't build avatars with expensive proc IO's or the extremely rare Purple IO sets. For the most part, whether or not the developers want to address this issue, an average player has no realistic chance of obtaining a full set of purple IO's.

For this avatar, I broke that rule. The avatar is my Stone / Mace tank. Now, I happen to be the opinion that in the current City of Heroes, players shouldn't make a stone tank unless they have the finances to IO slot their Stone Tank. The reason for this is that the Stone's final armor, Granite, has some serious penalties associated with it's use, which include a hefty debuff to global recharge speed, global attack strength, and global movement. Many of these debuffs can be dealt with by simply teaming up with other players. A Kinetics can erase the movement debuffs and recharge debuffs, and in mobs, erase the damage debuffs as well. An Empath or a Thermal Radiation can also ease the damage debuffs. However, in the current city of heroes, where a large number of players are AE leveled and have no practical game experience, it's not uncommon to be teaming with players that don't know how to use their buffs... although in all fairness, I am the one that has railed against Fire / Kinetics that never learned how to play kinetics to begin with.

Overcoming these stone armor debuffs without relying on teammates requires some of the most expensive and rare Invention Origin enhancement in the game. My build here ... is not going to work... for the vast majority of the player base. Obtaining the various IO's used to make this build required countless runs of Positron and Synapse Task Forces, and selling many merit obtained IO's for cash... and it still took me several months of saving to be able to make this build. I'd estimate that an average player might be able to duplicate this in about a year... maybe more.


So, why Stone Armor Anyways?

Well, Stone Armor is one of the best defensive armors in the game. At it's best, it's just about indestructible, capable of absorbing damage amounts that other armors can only dream of. That being said, Stone Armor is not a magic bullet in the game. While it's main penalty is the speed debuffs and damage debuffs in granite armor, for years the Stone set was the only Armor class to offer any defense against Psionics. However, this Psionic Protection comes from the Minerals power, which cannot be active at the same time as the Granite armor power.

My Goals for this Stone Armor build were thus two fold.

• Erase the recharge penalty
• Be useful in both armor sets, Granite and the other armors.

So why Mace?

Well, at first I had based the build off of my ice / mace for slotting. I knew what inventions the Mace set could accept, and I had an idea on what I could do with the IO's in the game. As time wore on and I learned more about how the game worked at it's base level, some of my Ice / Mace choices, well, missed the mark. Some of my slotting choices that I had in mind are still visible here in the stone armor, such as on Mud Pots.

Okay, lets start with a couple of overview picks. Here we can see that my love of franken-slotting continues. My apologies for the horizontal distortion. I normally play on a 16:10 wide-screen resolution, and the game itself doesn't handle scaling down to different aspect ratios very well.







Stone Armor Sets

Rock Armor: This is the basic smashing / lethal defense armor that stone tanks get. Here we can already see that it's defense value isn't actually that high. While I'm into Enhancement Diversification, otherwise known as ED, with my defense boost, I'm not even coming close to the 58% boost I had on my Ice Tank. This is because while my Ice had the franken-slotting of

• defense : defense / endurance : defense / endurance : defense

my Stone armor has the fraken-slotting of

• defense / endurance : defense / proc : defense / proc : defense / endurance

The reason for this particular franken-slotting is that the Gift of the Ancients set has a proc that boosts base run speed by 7.5%. and the Luck of the Gambler set has a proc that boosts base recharge speed by 7.5%. In City of Heroes you can have up to 5 of the same IO Buff before the effects stop stacking. So, I knew early on that I could get a 37.5% recharge boost (7.5% * 5) just on Luck of the Gambler alone. So I started saving up and buying LoTG with merits long before I ever actually made the Stone Tank as an avatar.

These particular proc boosts are based on the level of the player. If you are over the level of the enhancement, it will activate. If you go any further than three levels below the level of the enhancement, it will cease to proc.


Picking a level based enhancement proc for a certain level is known as Sweet-Spotting. The sweet spot for these level based procs when used against Granite armor is actually level 37. Level 37 is 3 levels higher than 34, which is the level cap for the Katie Hannon Task Force. At level 37 the procs will activate for the lowest level task force that a Stone Armor can use Granite In.

The reason I went with significantly lower level procs is that I had chosen the mace attack set, which is really, really, really slow to recharge. In order to be useful on the Sister Psyche Task Force, which caps at 25, the maximum level I could take for the recharge boost was level 28. I'll talk about the level 29 Gift of the Ancients run speeds later on.



Earths Embrace: This power works much like Hoarfrost from the Ice tank I made. It's a buff that increases the player's maximum hit points. Hit points matter not just for how much damage you can take, but also because the regeneration rate of an avatar is determined by the number of hit points. The higher the base health, the more hit points one regenerates.


This power is incomplete. I still need to pick up a Numina's Healing / Endurance / Recharge to fill in the last slot. I'm also intending to drop a slot from the next power and put it here, and add in an additional Numina's Endurance / Recharge to boost the recharge speed. This should push the power closer to the ED capped 3minute recharge, and close to permanent outside of Granite armor.



Mud Pots : Also known as what was I thinking. In my original plan for the build, I had intended to 5-slot all of my pbaoe powers with the Obliteration set. The Oblit is a great set, as it offers several fantastic buffs to damage, recharge, accuracy, and defense. Only... it's got a really, really, really big flaw. Oblits only offer one endurance discount, and it's in the quad-buff enhancement, so it's a really low endurance discount. That's a problem when Mud Pots is almost as endurance hungry as Focussed Accuracy, and there's no endurance recovery option available in the Stone or Mace sets.


My Alternative plan didn't really work either, but I'll get into that when we hit the Mace powers in the attack set.

For now, this slotting is going to change. What I intend to do is drop a slot back to Earths Embrace, two slot Mud Pots with the Cleaving Blow set for the small endurance recovery, and then fill in with two level 50 crafted endurance reduction IO's.



Rooted: This is the Stone armors first anti-mez power. It's also the power that too many stone tanks skip, and I quote, Because It's Too Slow. Rooted carries a high price for it's massive regeneration boost, and that's a dramatic loss in speed.


The Regenerative Tissue set offers an interesting proc, one that can be obtained at level 10, which offers a global regeneration boost. This proc is based on whether or not the power is active, so I put it in Rooted which I would be taking before the Health pool power.

As can be seen, the Regenerative Tissue set offers a 4% base running boost with just 2 procs. Unlike other healing sets, Regenerative Tissue does not offer a straight heal enhancement, so I went with it's maximum level healing / endurance enhancement. While I don't get the run boost in Sister Pysche, I do get it in Moonfire.


In order to press Rooted towards ED, I worked on obtaining the Numina Healing and Numina Healing / Endurance. As can be seen though, I didn't hit the ED cap, staying somewhere just below it.



Crystal Armor: Okay, here we are back in the actual defense sets. Okay, while my Luck of the Gambler 7.5's stick to level 28 consistently, my Gift of the Ancients sort of meander around from 25 to 28. There's actually a simple reason for this. I wasn't paying attention.

While the 7.5 recharges are really expensive, and rare, the 7.5 run speeds are significantly less so. I paid somewhere around less than 2 million apiece in Wentworths... only... when I realized how cheap they were and that I had just wasted some 1000+ merits buying then from a merit vendor... I wasn't paying attention when I bid thinking something to the effect of I can use these on a friends stone brute when going rouge hits. So I picked up 4 level 29 procs instead of 28's.

The 25 on Granite was actually a drop during a low level TF.



Minerals: The second most important armor next to Granite. For literal years, the Minerals power was the only Psionic Protection available to tanks. Players wanting to run the Challenge Shadow Shard content desperately needed a Stone with Minerals to handle the Wisps. Now though, with both the Dark Armor and Willpower sets available, too many Stones skip Minerals or don't figure out how to play with it.

Because Minerals was so important to the End Game Challenge content, it was one of the few powers that could almost be soft capped with Single Origin Enhancements after ED hit, and Psionic Defense could actually be soft capped with a pool power.



Granite: According to many Stone Tanks, Granite Armor is the magic bullet. Once you get it, nothing can touch you, you are the best thing there is for taking damage.

Em. Wrong. Yeah, Granite is a good Armor. It does offer a decent amount of defense to a wide range of powers, and some stellar resistance to a wide range of powers. That being said, it doesn't offer complete protection.

Yes, I could drop the defense / endurance enhancements and go with straight defense enhancements... but even if I hit the 58% boost that my ice tank has... my actual defense amount would go from 30.54% ... to 31.6%. I'd only gain 1% defense at best, use up more endurance, and it just didn't make sense.



By the same token, in boosting the resistances, if I dropped a defense power to boost resistance, the most I could get would be 49%~52% on a single slot... which only boost my resistances to 76% at best. Only if I took up 4 slots and hit 58% ED cap could I approach a 79% overall resistance. Yes, that's better than a fire tank. That's a lot better than a fire tank. That's invuln territory. But that means taking lower IO buffs, and loosing out on defense... a lot of defense.

So, for all practical purposes, with only 6 slots, there's no way to make Granite the all-powerful armor. So, I didn't. I went with the best combination of procs, endurance discounts, and boosts I could get that put me into ED.




Attack Sets

Once again, why mace? Well, I had several reasons for taking mace. I knew it was a high damage power-set. I knew that many powers could take Knockback IOs and one of the KB IO sets had a chance for plus recharge and an accuracy / endurance IO... so I could get a nice buff, not increase knockback... Until I actually tried that with a Willpower / Stone Melee build... and found that that the Chance for Recharge + was just that... a chance. It was nothing to rely on for a play build.

I also found out about the 5 Type Limit, where you can only have 5 of the same type of set boosts... regardless of whether or not those boosts came from different enhancement sets. The 5 type Limit is based on the actual buff. So, the 10% regeneration buff on Luck of the Gambler... is the same 10% Regeneration buff on Scirocco's Dervish. In my defenses alone, I already had 5 Luck of the Gambler 7.5's and 5 Luck of the Gambler Defense / Endurance enhancements, so I was capped on 10% regeneration buffs.

So, after rethinking the attack side, this is what I came up with:


Bash: The unskippable power. Every Mace Tank has to take this.


For my enhancements, for this and my next two melee powers, I went with the Crushing Impact set because it offered a recharge boost with 5 slots. In addition, Crushing Impact also offers a maximum health boost, although a small one.

I sweet spotted the IO's at level 44. I would still get the buffs on the Eden Trial, but I would be pushing into ED on the damage.



Pulverize: Way back on my Ice / Mace I had skipped Pulverize and had taken Jawbreaker, which was a more powerful attack, although a bit slower. I went with pulverize because it was a quicker attack, which mattered more in granite armor.



Clobber: Another power I skipped on my Ice / Mace... although now I intend to go back and fit it in. The 255 damage count is hard to overlook.



Taunt: A requirement on all tanks. Don't let anybody ever tell you that Tanks don't need taunt... and if you see a tank without taunt, quit the team. Trust me on this, I've got 20+ on Shields, Dark, and Invuln, 45 on Willpower, and 50 on Ice, Fire, and Stone.


For my slotting, I went with Pefect Zinger, which offers a recharge boost for only 4 slots. I've also hit the limit on the 10% recharge boost, so the 3 slot buff does nothing for this build.


PBAOE Attacks

Okay, taking a minute to talk here, since this is where things get really ugly. As mentioned earlier, many of my original plans for the attacks had fallen apart. The Obliteration Set didn't have enough endurance discounts to make slotting up 3 high-endurance powers... worth it. My slotting that I used on my level 50 spines / fire scrapper, which mixed 2 Scirocco's Dervish with 3 Oblits for a regen and damage boost... wasn't a good idea either since I had already capped on 10% regeneration. I'd have 6 slots pretty much offering no IO buffs, and with only a 12% damage boost overall if I had done up mud pots and my 3 mace attacks, I'd still be down on attacks in granite. Then, in order to properly support the heavy endurance drain on Mud - Pots and push my regeneration to practical limits, I was just running out of slots.

Then, I had an opportunity open up in my Epic Power Slots that was too good to pass up, but I needed some slots there.

So, I rethought my goals for the mace powers. I was in a position to completely erase the recharge debuff on my Granite armor. But to do so, I'd only be able to give 4 slots, on average, to each of the 3 PBAOE mace attacks.

So, my goals lined up in this order:

• Push Damage into ED
• Accuracy
• Endurance
• IO Buffs that would help

This, is what I came up with:

Whirling Mace: The first of the PBAOE's. I was able to push my overall damage to 95%, straight into ED. I also managed 47% on accuracy and endurance. I also wound up with a global boost to Energy / Negative energy defense, and a global recovery boost, albeit it a small one.


I got the buffs by combining a 3 slot Cleaving Blow with a 1 slot Multi-Strike. Ugly, but I had achieved my goals.


Shatter


Clobber:



Pool Powers

So, those are my attack sets. Now, for the pool powers. As before, the pool powers are used to fill in chinks in builds, and in the case of the Stone Tank, push it into the unkillable territory.

Recall Friend: All Stone tanks need to take the Teleport set. While I wish I had more slots for this power, I didn't.



Teleport: The reason why Stone Armor needs to take teleport is that the anti-mez power Rooted, and the final armor Granite, don't stack with any other travel power. The Leaping and Super Speed travel boosts disable Rooted and Granite on activation. I never tried to take the Fly set with Stone. Stone's that don't take the Teleport power probably don't have a firm grasp over how their armors behave.



My slotting choice for Teleport was the Blessing of the Zephyr set... and not just because it offers some very good defense buffs. It was also because the Winters Gift proc didn't help against the recharge debuff on granite, or the speed decrease on rooted and granite. The KB protection IO also comes in handy when traveling around Paragon.



Swift: I think this is the only time I've double slotted swift on a non-flyer. The base run speed really helps out.



Health: I often use Health as a platform for the Miracle and Numina procs. As it is an always on power, the buffs are also always on. Limited slotting means that I only have a 79% boost to it's regneration.


While I realize that Miracle +Recovery is expensive in Wentworths, it can be bought with around 240 merits. That's not really out of the range of a player that has done all of the Freedom Phalanx Task Forces.


By the same token, the Numina Proc is expensive if you go out and try to buy it with cash. Run real task forces and just buy it with merits.



Stamina: One of my opinions in City of Heroes is that the Endurance System needs to be overhauled... completely. Even on archtypes with native endurance recoveries, like Willpower and Regeneration, players will still be feeling the sting of running out of endurance at the worst times. Even if you work on Invention sets that boost your recovery in every power, or increase your base recovery, Stamina never stops looking like a must-have power.



For my slotting I went with a crafted level 50 IO, a Performance Shifter Endurance, and the Performance Shifter Proc for a boost to my travel speeds.


Boxing: To be fair, I have ranted about how useless pool power attacks are. They should only if, and this is a very strong if, they cannot be skipped. While I was able to fit some slots in Boxing on my Ice / Mace for an IO buff, I just didn't have room here.


Tough: A lot of stone tanks will take the stone skin power because it offers smashing / lethal resistance, takes up no endurance, and can be had at an early level. Personally, stone skin is one of the most droppable powers in the stone armor set. Tough also works with granite armor, offers 3 times the amount of base resistance for the same attack types, and that becomes very important during high level play and my slotting choices for Granite.



My slotting choices on Tough consisted of the Aegis set for a run speed boost... and I still need an Aegis Resistance here...


And the Steadfast Protection proc with it's accompanying defense / endurance enhancement to help out with endurance consumption. The Proc is level based and caps at 30, which really is the sweet spot if you are trying to maximize's a power's resistance. While expensive in Wentworths, it's around 125 merits. Run real task forces for this proc.


Weave: I cannot emphasize enough how important Weave is to Defense based tanks. Yes, it's only a 7.9% boost if you cap the amount of defense, which I haven't... but it's very important. Here, once again, I'm using it as a platform for the LoTG and GoTA procs.


Epic Pyre Mastery

On all of my previous tanks, and on my scrapper, I worked very hard towards supporting Focused Accuracy. However, the change to FA a couple issues back rendered most of the slottings of FA next to useless. It doesn't matter how much you slot the To-Hit, the buff is going nowhere, and you still have a metric ton of endurance drain to deal with.

When I got to the higher levels and looked at which Epic Powers made sense, I started looking for ranged attacks that would support the Decimation or Entropic Chaos power sets which offered a recharge boost. I didn't want the Laser Beam Eyes power... just didn't make sense for my avatar... but then I realized I could get a debuff in the pyre mastery set, and slot up the hold, Char, with the Basilisks Gaze hold set... right up until I realized that Basilisks Gaze had a 7.5 recharge boost, which I was capped on, and not the 6.5 recharge boost that other newer buff IO sets had.

While I was trying to figure out what to do on my slotting, I got a purple Hecatomb drop... which... when crafted and sold... gave me enough money for an entire support Purple IO slot.


Ring of Fire: It's an immobilize. Little damage, but that wasn't why I took it.


Gravitational Anchor: I'm not meaning to be rude, but you'll either need to farm for months to buy this set in Wentworths, or get extremely lucky and get a purple drop that sells for over 300,000,000 if you start from Zero Cash. I wasn't starting from Zero, and this is the first time I've used a set of purples... but the recharge boost was just too good to pass up... even though it meant putting off slotting my Fire / TA controller and Willpower / Stone Melee Tank.


Melt Armor: Nobody expects the tank to debuff, and I've been over before... here or on Gamenikki, I forgot, just how bad this power is compared to it's controller cousin.


For slotting I went with Lady Greys Defense Debuff for the recovery and maximum health boosts, and for the sets 3 enhancements with recharges.



The Hard Final Numbers

Alright, so there's how I slotted, and how I intend to change that slotting in the near future. So hows the build actually play?

Well, for starters, with this slotting, I was largely able to tank a Doctor Quarterfield Task Force without using Granite, and no other defense or resists boost. Yes, we did have a Controller with Sonic Buff, but that controller had not taken either shield... a common occurrence among AE leveled players.

At level 47, I was able to drag generals out of the canyon on a level 50 invincible ITF. I went on an STF at 49, before I could slot the purples, and before I had slotted up Health and Rooted with the Numina IOs, I was almost at the point of being able to contain all 4 end AV's without external buffs. I actually should have taken a picture of that, but Cedega doesn't play nicely with screen-shots on ATi cards in full-screen mode.

With this slotting I was able to main tank an Eden Trial without granite... all the way up to the titan... at which point the sheer number of incoming enemies forced me into Granite.

So, I know this slotting works. I know, from a numerical standpoint, it's MoSTF capable. So, what are those numbers? Lets look.

Base Stats W/O Accolades or Armors On

Base

Movement / Damage Resistance

Defense / Debuff Resistance

Status Protection / Status Resistance

Base Stats: Non Granite Armor With Rooted

Base

Movement / Damage Resistance

Defense

Debuff Resist / Status Protection / Status Resist

Endurance Consumption With Mud Pots On
(lower right corner listing)

Base Stats: Granite Armor With Rooted and Mud Pots

Base

Movement / Damage Resistance

Defense

Debuff Resistance / Status Protection / Status Resistance

Base Stats: Granite Armor, Rooted, Mud Pots, Accolades, Earth's Embrace


There we go. My Stone tank build as it is, well, right now.

Why I didn't take, and won't take part in, the Cash For Clunkers plan

After the previous post, I was contacted by somebody who asked why I just didn't go to a car dealership and take part in the Government sponsored Cash For Clunkers program. Now, rather than respond directly to this person, I've decide to just do a generic blog post explaining my reasons why I didn't take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program, and why I'm not going to take part in the Cash for Clunkers program.

Now, can anybody tell me how the current financial crisis was initiated? If you answered something to the effect of, banks lent money to people that couldn't pay it back, you'd be right. So does anybody know why banks lent money to people who couldn't make the payments? If you answered affirmative action, lawsuits from liberal democrats, and courts making law instead of interpreting law, you'd be right. Many banks and lending agencies were forced to lend money to minorities and certain racial groups on the grounds of having to be fair. Banks and lending agencies couldn't just tell a minority or certain racial group that they just didn't have the credit rating or security to justify the loan. In some cases, people who were declined loans because of failure to pay past loans on time, or failure to maintain a steady job, or were unable to present any proof of being able to actually pay the loan back on their current job, took the decline of their loan to court and won the loan amount on the basis that they were being discriminated against for their color, genetic background, or any other excuse.

The obvious solution to this sort of lending problem is to simply reject loan applications based on facts. Have you held a steady job? How much does your job pay you? Have you paid your bills in the past on time?

However, Democrats don't deal in facts. They really don't. The cash for clunkers program is proof, and here's why.

Can anybody tell me the demographic of somebody who is likely to drive a clunker car? If you said something to the affect of a low-income to middle-income family, you'd probably be right. People who drive clunkers... generally couldn't afford a new car to begin with. While their are exceptions, such as people who buy clunkers to rebuild them or refurbish them, or those that just like collecting cars, you wouldn't be wanting to take part in the Cash For Clunkers program. Upper middle class and rich families that were already buying from Porsche, BMW, and Audi, probably didn't have clunkers they wanted to trade in anyways.

Okay. So our demographic of low-income to middle-income is set. Can anybody tell me what the average cost of a decent car? Well, a VW 2009 Rabbit starts around $21,000. A Golf GTI is $24,000. A Honda Fit Sport starts at around $18,000. In fact, if you want something that's under $15,000 in the US? You'd better start at Kia. It's such a noticeable split in costs, a local Ford Dealership near where I live makes special mention of it's inventory under the $15,000 mark.

Okay. So for a decent new car from pretty much any car dealership in the US... is going to start around $15,000 if you cut everything out... and you'll be pressing $20,000 for a decent car with all the trim.

How much can you get for the best condition clunker on the Cash For Clunkers program?

I see the light clicking on in some eyes out there. You probably thought $4500. Which is just about right if everything goes your way. Realistically, the Cash for Clunkers is only gonna net $2000 to $3000 back. I'm not saying that isn't a lot of money...

I am saying that $15,000 - $3000 is still $12,000.

The really huge problem with the Cash for Clunkers program is that even in the best case scenario, you probably won't even get a third of the cost for a brand new car, with a factory warranty, and all the trim that makes it worth living in. In order to come out even slightly behind, you'd have to go buy a car from a Korean or Malaysian dealer... and no, that's not a good thing.

If you went and bought a Toyota, a good Ford, a Honda, VW, or anything else remotely decent, even with the Cash for Clunkers program you'd still be roughly $10,000+ in debt. You'd also be locked into a multi-year payment contract.

And what happens... if you can't make those payments?

Have I made the picture clear enough? All the Liberal Democrats have done with Cash For Clunkers is merely set the foundation... FOR ANOTHER FINANCIAL CRASH.

The demographic mostly likely to have clunkers, and the demographic most likely to use the cash for clunkers program in order to get a new car, is the exact same demographic that couldn't afford new cars to begin with. Even with a $2000 to $4000 discount, there's a real big question of how many of those purchases will default. How many car dealers have lent money, in the form of cars, to people that simply can't pay that money?

For me then, since I'm obviously capable of seeing the inherent financial trap in the Cash for Clunkers program, I'm not remotely interested in trying to take part in it. Yes. I think I have a steady job. Am I confident enough in that job to risk a $10,000+ loan from a car dealer?

No.

My observation does raise a crucial question. If the trap of car dealers selling cars to people who can't afford cars is so obvious... why would car dealers knowingly take part in such a bad business practice? My gut reaction is that the majority of car dealers look at what happened with GMC and Chrysler. Rather than simply standing aside and letting them die, like British Leyland, GMC and Chrysler have been bailed out. Many car dealers today might be betting their futures on getting bailed out again.

Question: what happens when Obama and crew is kicked to the curb and their legislation is repealed? What happens when GMC and Chrysler are told to make like BL and just DIE?

You don't think that's going to happen? Are you really confident enough to bet your money on it?

really. really. really. hating that berretta right about now

Okay, anybody's whose reading this knows I'm probably one of the worlds worst people when it comes to asking for donations or other financial support. I hate it. Only, I'm approaching a position where asking again seems like the only thing I can do.

Remember that Chevy Berretta that I took pictures of when the left front wheel came off due to a problem with the ball joint? Well, it's acted up again... with my radiator developing a huge crack and the head gasket "blowing." As best as I can figure listening to the real car mechanics, the problems with the water cooler from earlier kept the temperatures in the cooling system at a higher than normal level. The higher temperatures lead to the gasket that seals the main engine block and the head to developing cracks and leaking through. The higher than average temperatures in the engine head meant that the spark plugs fused to the walls.

Oh, and they weren't the right spark plugs either. Whoever owned the car before me had put the wrong kind of spark plug in. Since I'm not a mechanic, I don't know what the difference in spark plugs is. I just know that people who fix car engines said they were the wrong spark plugs.

Sooo...

I'm now looking at a $130 charge for a new radiator. A $400 charge to have the engine head rebuilt... and charges for new spark plugs, and a gasket kit.

As much as I dislike begging, if you have change to spare, I really could use it...

MMO - capturing the magic

Very recently other former players of the Planetside Outfit Band of the Hawk and I re-upped Planetside to try playing it again. It used to be one of my favorite games and I repeatedly used Gamenikki.com as a platform to rage against SOE for many of the brain-dead management choices. While other MMO's of the same time period, such as World of Warcraft and City of Heroes continue to grow and expand, Planetside has stagnated. While other MMO developers worked to update their clients to work against newer versions of Microsoft Windows, and in the case of NCSoft / Paragon Studios, hired a third party to insure platform support for Linux / Unix based systems, SOE did no such thing. Planetside won't run in Windows XP Service Pack 3, or any version of Vista, without enabling the Windows 95 compatibility mode. That's both interesting, and disturbing, for a game that was released after Windows Xp hit the market.

While playing Planetside I started to wonder what it was about the game that felt so special so many years ago. While I've ranted before about the destruction of the full military campaign in favor of a session-based play style, there was something more to it than that. There was something more special than hundreds of players crashing together over a single base.

The answer, surprisingly, came from outside Planetside and in City of Heroes. One of my policies with City of Heroes is that I don't create any new avatars until an existing avatar has hit level 50. Having just leveled and Ice / Rad to 50 I went to work on a new Dark Armor / Energy Melee tank. I also was testing out my recently completed triple SLI platform under Cedega... and as I loaded into Galaxy City on a fresh installation... the first thing that hit me was the music. It was a soaring, heroic, theme. The layout of the lower levels, designed to keep new players to the game contained to a specific area, teaching them the rules of the game world.

Later on I went with a group attempting the Sara Moore Task Force, and one of our team members had never been the shadow shard before... Our team leader, while having been on Shadow Shard TF's before, didn't know about the Mole Point Warpgate Shortcut. So much of the task force was spent teaching these players the tricks of the Shadow Shard...

Which was about when the answer came to me. What made Planetside so special so long ago, was that it was so new and unfamiliar. Nobody else had tried to do an MMO-FPS on that scale. Nobody else has attempted anything... on that scale. Not even Tabula Rasa succeeded in matching the scale of Planetside. Every new weapon, every new vehicle, every new cert point... changed the face of how you played the game. SOE's decision to chase after the UT / Quake market with session based play irreparably harmed the game, destroying the player base. Today, the few players left can pretty much get away with anything in Planetside.

Other MMO's kept building and expanding their worlds. As much as I dislike World of Warcraft, it's marched upwards with it's new lands, new dungeons, new challenges, new items, and so on. The Everquest series has grown as well, with regular expansions, proving that SOE does know how to expand at least one type of game. Niche MMO's, like Eve Online have grown as well. City of Heroes, once Jack Emmert was kicked out, mixed a Korean Micro-payments scheme with a traditional monthly pay scheme to become one of NCSoft's most profitable titles. The money earned on various booster packs didn't go to waste either, as the money was invested back into Paragon Studios to fund rapid expansion of the development team. As City of Heroes goes into it's 16th free expansion, it's already managed to match, if not surpass, all of the features it's former lead developer never delivered, and only promised to deliver in Champions Online. WarHammer Online is another game that continues to expand and grow, with new character classes and new lands.

One of keys to keeping a subscription base, as I can determine, is continuing to capture the magic that made somebody like the game to begin with. I think the principle holds up well outside of MMO's. Many Multiplayer shooters, like Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament, Quake, and Doom, have retained long lives in their markets by offering up community created maps, weapons, and characters. Valve Software caught a metric ton of flack over announcing and demonstrating Left 4 Dead 2 before there was software developers kit for the first Left 4 Dead. Over 40,000 accounts have joined the Steam Group promising to NOT buy L4D2. I think the point stands that multiplayer games need fresh content to continue to survive.

I think F.E.A.R. Combat and Far Cry stand as two excellent examples of Multiplayer Combat that faulted over when players just couldn't find new content.

Planetside? Well. It didn't grow. The age of the game is readily appearent the minute somebody loads in. It's a sparse, barren world. The bases have remaind the same. The planets have remained the same. As much as I liked the game, it's gone absolutely nowhere in literal years. It just hasn't managed to recapture any of the magic that set it apart so long ago.

Perma Bans in MMO's: Test case in the courts?

From Game Politics : http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/07/21/lawsuit-banned-resistance-player-alleges-sony-violated-free-speech-and-stole-his-money

The short version is that a player who was banned from the Playstation Network is suing Sony, describing the ban as theft. The player states that he bought Playstation Points that are non-refundable and that since Sony banned him, they have stolen the money he had spent.

I think most MMO companies, such as NCSoft, Activision, and EA, will be watching this case with interest. If the court decides, rightfully, that the player violated the Terms of Service agreement for the Playstation Network and that Sony was well within their rights to ban the account regardless of how much the player had spent, trolls everywhere will be put on notice that their actions can carry a financial loss.

If the court decides, wrongly, that Terms of Service agreements are meaningless, and that game companies overseeing private networks are not allowed to control access to those private networks, then the message will be sent out that trolls can behave as badly as they want. Legally, there is no recourse of action a game company can take in the US.

One of the key failures in this player's argument is that Sony is breaching his First Admendment rights. Basically, the player is claiming that he can be as vulgar as he wants, as obscene as he wants, and as filthy as he wants... because that's his right to free speech. Well, if I yell FIRE in the middle of a crowded theater or mall, and there isn't one... guess what? That's not protected under free speech.

There are precedents set of what constitutes free speech, and where free speech applies. If you start shouting obscenities in the middle of a crowded mall, Mall Security has every right to come escort you off the premesis, and they can do so under a variety of different reasons. Some security types might file an official complaint that you are disturbing the peace. Other security types might lean on the whole private property rules. Still yet more Security types might point out that obscene language is not covered under Free Speech and then have a restraining order posted.

In the same way, massive multiplayer online networks are private property. As much as some people might not like the idea, World of Warcraft, Everquest, WarHammer Online, City of Heroes, Playstation Network, Xbox Live, and so on... are not public forums. They are private networks that require agreeing to some rules and regulations. Those Terms of Service enable the network administrators to set their own rules about what is appropriate, and what is not appropriate. Some ToS outline some of the steps that might be taken if you break the rules and regulations that have been set.

The hope is that the first judge to get this case laughs this particular player out of the courtroom, not even allowing a jury trial based on the sheer ludicrous nature of the complaint. The hope is that a judge would look at the plaintiff and say something to the effect of You Broke There Rules, Get over it.

The worry is that a judge might be more interested in setting a verdict against Sony, or isn't interested in examining the merits of the complaint or the case itself. In such a case, the ability of network maintainers to provide a safe enviroment for their player base could be greatly diminished, and a ruling in favor of the plaintiff carries the remote possibility of ruining the ability of MMO's to operate inside the US.

yes. I am on facebook. quit asking

Yes. I do have a facebook account.

No. I haven't suddenly taken to liking social networking. I needed to establish a login due to Adventure Crossing setting up events through Facebook... and events aren't viewable without an account.

Yes, the picture on the facebook page is me. It's from 2007 and was taken by an editor while waiting for Nintendo's E3 press conference to start.

On another note, I did find Facebook's friends linking rather... interesting. Upon signing up Facebook surprising suggested two names that I recognized. Ralph Hayes Jr. for example, whose comics I've referenced in the past. Jonathan Pointdujour, one of the other writers on Gamenikki. Some names... I'm still trying to figure out why Facebook said I might know them... like Steven Sarron and Nerina Christos.

Why don't Democrat's use Firefox?

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/125949.htm

And I quote

QUESTION:Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just (applause) I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.)

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.)

UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: The answer is at the moment, it’s an expense question. We can --

QUESTION: It’s free. (Laughter.)

UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Nothing is free...

SECRETARY CLINTON: ... And it reminded me of what I occasionally sometimes do, which I call shopping in my closet, which means opening doors and seeing what I actually already have, which I really suggest to everybody, because it’s quite enlightening. (Laughter.) And so when you go to the store and you buy, let’s say, peanut butter and you don’t realize you’ve got two jars already at the back of the shelf – I mean, that sounds simplistic, but help us save money on stuff that we shouldn’t be wasting money on, and give us the chance to manage our resources to do more things like Firefox, okay?

Okay. Yes. I did cut some of the mid chatter out... but every technician worth his salt is having a big what the bloody hell moment after reading that. First of all, Mozilla FireFox is Open-Licensed software. It is both free of cost, and free of patent and licensing concerns. It also is amazingly simple to maintain. The update mechanism works just from within the application.

Where-as with Internet Explorer, you have to use Microsoft Windows Update to patch the application. You also have to make sure you read every single update because some updates contain submarine applications... like the .Net Plugin for FireFox that disables the uninstall option. A bit like any bit of legislation put forward by the Democrats that contains submarine spending and no way to say no to that spending.

... in that light, the Democrats might have a better handle on FireFox versus Internet Explorer than most technicians are giving them credit for right now. IE works like a Democrat political process. FireFox... doesn't.

The issue with Windows 7 pricing

The page in question is here : http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Windows-Windows-7/category/102

The pricing in question is this:

$49 for Windows 7 Home Premium

$99 for Windows 7 Professional

Okay, these are the upgrade prices... which are cut in about half. Microsoft also states that the pre-order on upgrades is good as long as supplies last and classifies these prices as a limited time offer.

Question: How actually determines how much supplies are on hand, and what their value is?

The answer is of course Microsoft. It's quite literally impossible for Microsoft to run out of supplies, since they are the ones making the supplies available.

It's a cute trick though. By making the prices for Windows 7 very competitive now... as the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade is less than the cost of most Xbox 360 and PS3 games, many consumers will feel they are forced to buy now rather than paying out the regular prices later.

Thanks Microsoft, I do intend to avail myself on one of the Professional upgrades... I do need to know how to fix such installations of course... but stuff like this isn't likely to make me move away from Mepis Linux.

11 year old says Video games a waste of time... um. He's wrong.

Story is carried by the NBC-LA here: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/11-Year-Old-Graduates-From-LA-College.html?yhp=1

The jist of the story is that an 11 year old boy is graduating from an LA college, has some experience with martial arts, and says Video Games are a waste of time.

Okay, for the most part, he probably does have half a point. Back in 2008 I went over that just playing MMO's didn't automatically grant leadership skills. For the most part, Video Games are just for having fun, a way to sit back and relax.

That being said, Video Games aren't just a way to waste time. Lets skip the educational games for a minute and talk real-world applications. Steven Spielberg, the legendary film director and producer, made headlines when he used Epic's Unreal Engine to make the sets for A.I. Today, it's common practice for not only movie studios, but television studios, to build sets in game engines first to make sure that positioning and lighting is accurate before actually building sets. Ever heard the old saying, Measure Twice, Cut Once? It's the same effect. Instead of having to build a set, find out it doesn't work as expected, visual entertainment production teams can save time and money, real money, by doing the work first on a digital gaming platform.

Video games haven't just made an impact on production of visual entertainment outside of Video Games. They've also had an impact on construction and architecture. Lets say you are building a house, and you hire a qualified architect. Chances are, he'll probably use some Computer Aided Design program to check out how your house is going to be built long before he ever hands over the first set of blueprints. So, question. What has driven the development of C.A.D. programs over the past 10 years? If you answered Video Games, you'd be right. As developers have struggled to produce buildings that are more realistic and believable, they have for the most part built the tools needed to do so. Okay, if you want to get technical, Industrial Light and Magic has been capable of producing spectacular special effects, both digitally and with props, since the 1970's. However, most of the Hollywood companies that went digital use huge rendering farms backed by some form of Unix, and now Linux. However, if you stop and take a look at say, Valve's Left For Dead, you'll find an incredibly realistic farmhouse... that probably only took hours to build versus days that a movie production studio would normally take.

So, Video Gaming drove the development of faster tools, that ran on commodity hardware, and commodity Operating Systems. The gaming aspect isn't lost on other aspects of construction, such as road design. Game developers have pushed the development of tools and resources to design racing games that feature realistic surface reaction, realistic car reaction, and realistic lighting. You'd be hard-pressed to find a road construction company that hasn't used a game engine to model and try out their new roads ahead of time now.

The US military also has real world uses for video games. While America's Army has a long ways to go before it can match the full world battle simulation of Planetside, its small scale, close quarters offerings are some of the most realistic in the world. In the latest versions used by the US Army itself in training, it's replaced monsterous mainframe systems with cheap commodity hardware... and it's actually proven in battle. There are cases on the record books where field medics, and even civilins, have preformed medical procedures they only experienced before in the America's Army Video Game. Waste of time? Not according to according to the guys responsible for putting warheads on the forheads either.

AFBlues covered this topic in a very effective manner recently, in this comic : http://www.afblues.com/?p=941. A UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle had crashed. Nobody was hurt, injured, killed, or whatever. Now... just where do you think the implementation for UAV's came from? If you said Video Games, you got it right. Most of the major improvements in remote control and video control have come from video games. To many UAV pilots, sitting down at their console and flying their craft is exactly identical to sitting down at a computer monitor and loading up a really good flight simulator.

The examples of real life implementations of video games go on. Space Shuttle Launches? Take a good look at the inside of NASA's space centers when they put a shuttle launch on TV. Air-Defense and Missile Command Systems? Good luck determining whether or not a Patriot Missiles Control deck is a game. It isn't of course, but if you wanted to, you could use it to simulate an entire missile attack and counter-attack. The implementation of video games in real life is not just limited to Military applications either. City bomb squads depend on robots and controls that were developed as off-shoots of... you guessed it... video games.

The idea of using games for combat training has been around for years, it was one of the major plot points to Orson Scott Card's book, Ender's Game. In that book, children were told they were playing games... instead they were training for, and then actually implementing real battle strategies and controlling epic fights light years away. Monica Hughes used the same sort of plot point in her book, Invitation To the Game. The plot point there consisted of a group of grade school graduates being introduced to an alien world... through a video game. Then there was Star Trek and the Holo Deck. In fiction, the ideas have been there for decades. Now, those ideas are here... in reality.

Okay, as I explained back in 2008, just playing a game doesn't automatically grant you certain skills. However, certain games can teach you certain skills. Playing a Flight Simulator won't automatically teach you how to pilot a Cesna. However, you can use a Flight Simulator to improve your skills and how you interact with the equipment. You can train your eyes to detect certain positions of the aircraft. Most flight schools put pilots through hours in simulators before sending them up in a real craft. Waste of time? I've yet to meet one pilot who thought a Flight Simulator was a waste of time.

Now, I realize that I am dancing around the issue of how an 11-year old managed to get a degree in LA's University System. That is a can of worms on it's on. From that single comment on video games though? I seriously question how good LA's school system is if it could turn out somebody that can't even see basic benefits that video gaming has brought over the past years.

Then again, it is LA. I've been there. I can't really say I'm surprised.

CoH cheaters caught? you tell me

If there's one thing I hate in online games, it's players that cheat. I especially hate those twho finds ways to break various games, or find ways to grief other players. Now, I've used both this blog, and Gamenikki.com before to call out various people who I believe have crossed the bounds. Well, two of my friends just screen-capped me dealing with appearent cheaters in Atlas Park. Since NCSoft tends to be extremely slow, to completely non-responsive to dealing with these types of issues until their hand is forced, I'm going to go ahead and force it. You read through these screen-shots and tell me whether or not some of the players are out-right admitting to abusing the AE system.