ineffablebob

All right, let's get some Synapse plans going. It looks like Friday or Sunday evenings are likely to be best for most folks, and we can probably run both given that you can do it with three people if necessary. So, who's up for: Friday Jan 15 at 8 PM Eastern - ineffablebob - Greycat - Jacke - cranebump - FFW Sunday Jan 17 at 8 PM Eastern - ineffablebob - Greycat - Jacke - FFW I can make either time, and have two eligible characters (as long as I'm willing to cheat and EX Classic Hero down, which I am) so likely I'll end up doing both.

Sunday for sure. Saturday is out. Weeknights are largely day-to-day guesswork, but if we pinpoint one ahead of time I can probably be there.

Make Me Smart is one of my favorite podcasts - a public radio show hosted by Molly Woods and Kai Ryssdal. So naturally I thought, what if they had superpowers? Behold: Kai-PA and Molly of the Woods! Being radio/podcast personalities, both have sonic powers, of course! And anyone who is familiar with the podcast will recognize the colors in those superhero costumes. Molly has done a lot of stories about climate change and how to adapt to it, so she gets plant control for the nature aspect of that adaptation, making her a Plant/Sonic controller. She's accompanied everywhere by her mutant intern, Ethan Parets. Kai is very much a beer guy, specifically IPAs, so he's a water beer/sonic blaster. And has super speed, being an avid runner. Here they are in action! (Sorry about the low quality video, I'm a very amateur video capturer.) Molly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e44BWTudk1Q Kai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9MsdLYfBQs Find them on the Everlasting server!

Lots of good teaming tonight! Just wrapped up with this group: We tore through a couple of Sky Raider missions, and then wrapped it up with some DE. Which was not quite as smooth, but hey, team wipes are so 2004!

Well, we finally did it folks - got together and fought our way through the Positron Task Force. @Jackeput out the call and we ended up with 4 classics and 2 other friends. Took about 2.5 hours and there certainly was some dying, but in the end we took 'em down. That's me on the knight, @Jackeon Jacke, @Max Firepoweron C0ld, and @Mysterious Jon Babe Blue - classics all. Having our non-classic friends @Alty(Cirque) and @RagManX1(Speed) along really sped things up. Invis/TP and confuse, and speed boost - saved us a good hour at least. Though we also fought through the first few missions at higher levels due to some level difficulty confusion, so it did even out a bit.

It is, but you can work around it by simply not buying every possible SO. If you stick with DOs, you can pretty easily afford enhancements up to L30-ish. Back in the day, I'd buy only accuracy, recharge, and sometimes defense/resist L22/25/30 SOs. Everything else, buy DOs. Should be affordable, and by the time you're getting L35 SOs (from your special origin contact store, remember) you should have enough for a full slate of SOs. Of course, once you had a toon at 50 making bank, and an SG mate to help you transfer the influence, you could work around all this. But for our purposes, it works.

As you work through these classic contacts, you quickly realize that some of them have agendas... Story arcs everywhere! That one in the middle was a patrol in IP, by the way. A nice multi-mile long jump exercise, but it was rewarded since the next mission was the last one in the arc. So Classic Hero 2004 went to work gathering the pieces of that oh-so-dangerous Wheel of Destruction! I like the temp powers you get as you gather the pieces - too bad they don't last past the end of the mission. Anyway...success! And with the arc completion bonus (which is a lot more than it was at launch, by the way), that's level 25! Couple more slots for Short Circuit, looking forward to more end draining. And possibly more important, another row of inspiration slots! After so long with 10, having 15 inspirations feels like luxury. She's still got those other two arcs to finish out. Hopefully will have some time tonight after family stuff to get on, find some teammates to beat up the Tsoo and Sky Raiders.

Just had a nice session with @cranebumpand several folks from Repeat Offenders who made classic toons. Beat up a lot of Freakshow, Sky Raiders, and Tsoo! Classic Hero 2004 is 24 now and can almost afford to buy all the SOs she needs.

Haven't had many folks interested in rolling Eagles, but I've been playing mine. Short-out Shock has done all the iTrials, and most of the task forces and trials. He got the Really Hard Way badge today (thanks @Sundew) which would absolutely have been impossible back on Live. Way too many chances to die before you could get to all T4 incarnate, much less getting people together who knew what they were doing to get the badge!

I'm usually around afternoons and evenings, US East time, but I know others have been on later. The best way to find us is to join the global channel as listed in the original post, and give a shout out to see who else might be around. If you don't already see us in the SG list, that is!

You know, just about everyone ends up doing that Vahzilok plague arc. Classic Hero 2004 joined up with @Six-Six's BLASTRO who had the arc, and along with Razorshrike's blaster we took care of Patient Zero and then went after the Doc. Technically I was fighting at a tougher level than I would have in 2004, since I was 21 and the mission was 19 - in the old days I'd have stayed at 21 instead of being EX'd to 19. But whatever, close enough. There were some hospital visits, particularly when we ran into a group of +1s that didn't take kindly to being pulled in small bunches. But we persevered and in the end... We actually took the Doc out without a death, thanks in large part to clearing every zombie we could from around him first. We all got levels at one point or another in the arc, and I used the opportunity to complete my own version of the Doc mission. Felt that made sense, given my earlier clearing of everything but the Doc himself. That was enough to get me to 22. Woot, KB protection! (In the form of Acrobatics.) Also SOs, but all I could afford was the accuracies. Gonna have to stick with DOs for everything else, until my influence count catches up!

That's one of those things that we can't really recapture from launch - soloing a defender (much less a controller) was incredibly difficult. Vigilance makes a big difference, as well as various other tweaks in power functionality. Soloing an Empath in 2004 was an exercise in patience, if not outright futility - now it's just slower than other options. Having said all that, having played Classic Hero 2004 (Kin/Elec) up to 21 now, I can confirm that a powerset with useful self-buffs and debuffs works well. Missed out on last night's teaming as life got in the way, but I should be on some later tonight, hoping to see a few of y'all then.

I was thinking about getting too far ahead, too, but turning off XP? C'mon now, the right answer to playing with lower level toons is to roll another alt! 🙂 Which I have done, Cerulean Knight 2004 is in Atlas Park for whenever people are doing lowbie stuff. He was my first scrapper back in the Live days, Broadsword/Invuln.

Yeah, I forget exactly when, but at some point the missions from the intro contacts were changed to have no bosses, regardless of your settings. But once you get into King's Row, those punches don't get pulled any more!

Well, Classic Hero 2004 will be joining you all in the No Issues SG, 'cause this happened: A single +1 Lt, stunned her and then hit with 3 straight big attacks - and he was debuffed with Siphon Speed and Siphon Power, too. From full health to dead with no way to react. Things were very much deadlier in the past! I did have a Break Free, but have been only using them pre-combat as per the old rules, and I didn't think one Lt was worth using one...whoops. The good news is that she's almost L21 and has 5 different 20-25 contacts lined up with phone numbers. Plenty to do for the next few levels! Congrats! Welcome! Hoping to have some time tonight to check in with the global channel and see if we can get some teaming going.

Had just a few minutes to play this morning and decided, OK, it's time to deal with that cesspool of viral infection. It's only L18 and I'm L19-going-on-20. 4 bodies to burn! First 3, no problem, and got that level in the process. And then... OK, we can do this, let's see - his peripheral vision can't be very good in that thing... Got it! All four bodies gone, we win! Except...we don't, because the mission doesn't complete. Curse you, time eddy! In 2004 that would have worked, but from the Issue 12 patch notes: Well, shoot. I could autocomplete it since I did what a true launch character needed to do, but I think I'll leave it for now and next time I can go on to my new level 20 contacts. It'll be very satisfying to go back someday and beat the snot out of him.

It's great to see people getting together to enjoy the classic playstyle! I've been fairly busy this weekend so not much in-game time, but should be around a good amount next week. Classic Hero 2004 isn't in the We Have No Issues SG, 'cause she's an Iron Eagle, but she'll move over if I have bad luck and she dies at some point. But do feel free to give a shout out on the global channel if you see me online in the channel members list, I'm always interested in meeting folks who are trying this out!

Not at launch, there wasn't! No badges until Issue 2. And man, was that the subject of some angst, let me tell you. Because until they added Recluse's Victory and had an Infected occasionally spawn near the tram, there was no way to get Isolator on existing characters. (Issue 7, I think that was.) I remember people camping it, and of course then someone would try to murder them, it being a PvP zone. I never did, and when Ouro came around (Issue 11) my patience was rewarded when the Ouro intro arc made getting Isolator (comparatively) easy. Yep, that happened frequently. Even not counting buffs like 2XP, XP in general was slower at launch. Mission rewards were lower, arc completion bonus was *way* lower, and I believe even per-minion XP was lower. You'd often be level 4 and have nothing to do until you hit 5 and your contact would pass you along to the next tier, and the same at each 5-level interval. I'm pretty sure you never died from falling alone - I remember dropping off buildings even in the CoH beta and surviving. Although I suppose it's possible I just got lucky. However, the one-shot-kill from mobs was definitely a thing prior to Issue 7. After that, a single hit would at most put you at 1 HP - but in big fights, there would often be another little hit that got through so quickly afterward that it still felt like a one-shot. Oh goodness, yes - I actually slotted Rest for recharge on my first tanker. And it was not a particularly bad choice for the first dozen or so levels! Of course, I regretted it later on, since there was no respec yet. That guy got shelved for a long time...

It definitely did, 'cause I remember using it quite a bit! Those early patches were...not pristine. And it didn't always help. I remember one mission in particular where we all fell through the floor on entrance, landed WAY below at 1 health, and nothing we did would get us out. My buddy's regen scrapper in the group was at full health in a few seconds and he said "well, at least I know my Fast Healing is working". Ended up having to relog to get out, and then call a GM to get rid of the mission.

Got to team a bit with @Greycattonight, good fun! We beat up a large number of Tsoo and shut down their Rage Lab. So...many...sorcerers... I had not noticed that! That's a great loophole for levels 1-11. Sell the lowbie DO enhancements you can't use, buy trainings from the base instead. And yeah, I'm with you on only slotting accuracy or (in toggles) end redux. Not enough slots to make sense to do anything else before L12 anyway.

To make it easier to find one another, I have created a global channel named "Launch Re-enactors". Anyone interested welcome to join! Should make finding SG invites easier, at the very least. /chanjoin "Launch Re-enactors"

Awesome! If Classic Hero 2004 dies and has to leave the Iron Eagles, she will certainly join you. I'd say go ahead and make a base. Once you hit 40, you can use it!

I've been doing that too...while of course there were no lowbie DOs at launch, there were training enhancements, so I'm just treating is as a straight replacement. Couple of us at least are on Everlasting already. As for an SG, I'm using the Iron Eagles, but I know not everyone wants to run deathless. Someone feel free to make one!

Classic Hero 2004 got her revenge on Mr Po and his crew, going back in there just prior to leveling and hitting 19 on the first couple of groups. Spent the level-up inspiration time hitting glowies, then once they faded finished off the Tsoo. Which was still tricky since that made them even level, but she managed it with judicious inspiration management and a lot of pulling - especially those annoying Yellow Ink Men. That led directly into the Rage Lab mission, which I'll do next time along with another Tsoo mission I had from another contact. With the level advantage it shouldn't be too bad, but I'm certainly looking forward to getting some variety in enemies! One more level to 20, and then the Freakshow and Sky Raiders should start making an appearance.

Not before 40! All the various rewards other than enhancements and inspirations were added after launch. Of course, they'll come in very handy after you break out at 40...