I think we’ve broken our own record again, making this the longest episode. This wasn’t the intention, but I guess we’ll see if everybody who said “longer episodes please!” really meant it 🙂 I promise that this won’t be a habit and future episodes will get back under the hour mark.
This is part two of our guest interview with Rich. There was some very important, last minute news that was added just before we posted though which takes a little time to get through.
In this episode we discuss:
- A last minute news item from Lighthouse and Positron
- Dr. Brainstorm’s Discovery
- Powerset Proliferation
- Improved Character Creator
- Back to the Burrow for us
- The new Forums are rocking – come join us (they got their first porn submissions!)
- Chooch went to lunch with Mur Lafferty, Tee Morris, Marc Bailey & Heather Welliver, and many other creative peoples
- Don’t forget our new voicemail number: 206-333-3206
- Some explanations of why some powers did or did not make it into the proliferation, including letting us know that eventually ALL of the powers should make it over!!
- Rich’s tour of villainy
- Promos: Balticon Podcast, The Next Fix
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12 replies on “Episode 18 – Tour of Villainy”
I cannot find the Lighthouse/Positron post you are referring to… any chance of some link goodness?
Argh! I am usually the first person to spot an April Fools joke… Can’t believe I fell for it!
I was partially got. I follow the Dev Tracker but not so much with the Lighthouse/ExLibris tracker. I heard death of PvP zones and thought… nooo, I would have heard. Heck, I expect some of my monitor would have melted.
But I still popped over to the dev tracker, just to be sure. 🙂
So, what do Chooch & Viv think about the whole Issue 12 Biff/Bam/Boom thing?
Loodites!?!? Next time, let’s interview Rich and his wife together.
Mercy does have a contact in the 15-20 level range, actually. She’s got a great series of missions which teach you a lot about Ghost Widow. Last I checked, you didn’t need to get introduced to this contact, either. Just click on her when you hit 15 and you’re set. She’s near the helicopters.
Interesting that Rich moves from zone to zone when he gets certain levels. I guess I do that moving from Mercy to Port Oakes but the rest of the way through the game I’m going back and forth.
Rich is right, Grandville is DANGEROUS! I can cruise through the Hollows with just Sprint. I superjump my way from Zulu to the Storm Palace just for fun. But when I get to Grandville, I fear for the first 5 levels, especially on a character with no stealth. Nevermind trying to get around as a lacky.
Couch Potato is for a different Television mission, actually.
Something different about CoV zones – the “danger areas” are pretty much the hazard zones. When you, say, go into the power station area in Cap au Diablo, you are pretty much in a hazard zone with big spawns and bosses hanging around.
Wait a second, how can Rich say he shoves off of islands before he’s done with the contacts there then say later that he can do all the contacts by the time he hits 50??
Hehe, blow up Galaxy, sounds fun. Move all Viv’s contacts to Atlas. I like!
April Fools? You take my heart and emotions, exploit them for some whim, and leave me a worthless husk of a man? What are you…my ex wife?
I guess I deserved it for posting that por—uh, I mean…
Lots of info about Proliferation (thanks!), and I’m not sure I’ll understand it all until I see it in front of me. At one point, I thought I heard you say Scrappers will be getting a Secondary called “fiery heat rash”…
If I had not just seen the April Fool’s joke on the CoH website you would definitely haven’t gotten me.
FREEM!
I’d just like to point out that Back Alley Brawler used the cha cha joke after I’d used it in another thread 26 hours earlier! Joke thief! To be fair, I did of course lift the joke from the movie Real Genius.
Is Viv using a new/different mic? Closer to the mic than usual? She has a little more “pop” at the end of her hard consonants than usual. This applies to the news and entry part of the cast, once Rich’s interview kicks in it goes away, but that was probably a different recording session.
Hey, thanks for the corrections, Zloth! I completely forgot to mention Seer Marino in Mercy. Her story arc is one of the most enjoyable ones in the game in my opinion. It’s the first time, as a villain, that you come into any sort of “personal contact” with a members of the Lord Recluse Club. There’s a second tier contact in Cap, Marshal Brass, who will introduce you to Seer Marino, but you can simply go to her at level 15 and introduce yourself. She’s a Seer… she knew you were coming to her anyway. 😉
As for me moving from zone to zone at different level thresholds, it’s what I generally do. However, there are mushy parts where I sometimes go backward to a previous zone. For instance, Nerva contacts begin at level 25, and that’s when I move to Nerva, but there are third tier contacts in Sharkhead whose missions also start at 25. So after doing some Nerva stories, I might dip back into Sharkhead to do a few of those “higher level” contact missions. Same thing holds for going to St. Martial at 30, but dipping back into Nerva to do some of those third tier contact missions. So it’s more of a general rule than a hard rule.
And I *can* hit every contact on the way to 50, but I mostly only do the ones that have awesome story arcs, badge missions, or temporary powers to give away. 😉
I would like to make a minor retraction, though. I stated I’d like to see more islands (zones) in the Rogue Isles. I think I’d rather just see more contacts. There’s really enough actual zones, but some new contacts would provide some more variety!
Another excellent podcast. I don’t mind the length. Very interesting overview of the COV zones, thanks Rich. I can’t wait for the next cast.
Ahhh! So you do go back and forth some, OK. I thought that was rather odd.
It really seems to me like there are a lot of contacts in CoV. It’s pretty cramped at the lowest levels but once I get over 5 it’s tricky to hit them all. Veluta Lunata’s “Arachnos Ghost Story” is a neat arc for 10-15th level but I’ve only gotten to see it once.
The stories in CoV definitely seem more interesting. There are some great ones on the CoH side but, arc for arc, I think CoV has better ones. I’m guessing the people writing them had more experience (and tools?) to do them.
I believe a lot of the villain-side story arcs were written, or at least put together, by Shane Hensely, aka the original Captain Mako. Shane is the guy who wrote the pen and paper RPG Deadlands. He’s a great writer and really good at crafting stories. He left Cryptic last summer to begin working on the Deadlands MMO. It’s gonna be awesome!
Ok I haven’t finished listening to this one yet but you had me the whole time!