Onward

Lots of play time on on Champions as I continue to relearn that game system.   Coincidentally this weekend was a double-XP weekend.  Nice timing Cryptic.    They've got to know they'd get a lot of City traffic coming their way.  Even tuning into the Cape the theme is rampant -- They were playing Tom Petty's "Refugee" song when I turned it on.   

Still playing around with character designs.   I started to make a version of Ultroman on Champions, an electrical controller, using the Tempest.  He eneded up in a Diode outfit, white, blue and gold with the name Ultravolt.   It looked neat but the powers on him were a lot of fun to play with.  I've gotten his Sparkstorm up enhanced to where he can run up to meet a mob, cut loose, and usually take them ALL out barely getting scratched.   Doctor Futura also has his personal force field now, extending his durability considerably.  He's got a cone force crushing wave power that is also enhanced and given the right position can be as good as  Ultravolt's Sparkstorm.   Unlike that power, the crushing wave seems to do better at medium to long range than short range. 

Not ever power is so successful.  I've tried several powers under different names.  And some of those heroes die REPEATEDLY.  I guess I'm used to the CITY mentality -- clearly some blasters are not glass, some tanks actually CAN do damage early on, etc.    New universe -- new rules.

I still continue to see Characters and Supergroups that seem to be intentional homages to City of Heroes and its lore.   Even with that multiverse gone, people love it so much they bring it with them.  Personally it troubles me a bit.   I got to wondering if this was NCSoft's plan.   They wait for us to recreate characters in the other games.  Seeing as how they, by EULA, have rights to ALL the characters we made over there, they could sue the blazes out of Cryptic for every City of Heroes cloned character people have brought over.   Its sad to say, but NCSoft's reputation is so in the toilet now, I wouldn't put it past them to extort some quick money out of Cryptic and perhaps Sony as well. 

Today also marks the release of Skyrim's latest DLC.  I'm anxious to give it a shot.   I've also been shopping for a new computer.  Now that I don't have to worry about losing the CITY client, I can move on.   The current computer was purchased when Circuit City closed its doors several years ago.   Its a Vista machine from HP, although it has an older quad core processor 2.4mhz Q6600.   Graphic wise it has an ATI Radeon HD 3600 video card which isn't great.  I've been focusing on some CyberPowerPCs , and have seen several in the $1100 to $1600.    I hope to go back to Nvidia cards, more than likely getting a GTX series card now.   I saw some of what they do with the Physx and really am impressed.    I'm surrounded by stores now that DON'T have these machines in stock -- Best Buy, Frye's, even Office Max, despite having on their website.   I hope to get 16GB of ram on this one and at least 2 GB of video ram.  Considering I've had to put up with 20-30 frames a second with some settings downplayed, most of these will be giant leaps forward.   Moving stuff off should be easier with the remote drives I have, even if one I don't trust fully any more.  I'd like to get a BluRay on this new machine too - for software installs if nothing else.  Christmas will likely delay the arrival of whichever machine I end up with . I've usually gotten general purpose models off the shelf.  Not this time.   I've seen some sleek stuff on some of these gaming models -- including radical lighting, cooling systems, temprature monitors, etc.  I've never been one to push machines so overclocking isn't an issue.  I'd just love to have a PC that I don't have to worry if it can handle every single piece of software I buy.   This machine was good in its day, but now?  I do a lot with photo manipulation software, audio recording and converting,  and starting in the last year or so video manipulation software.   THAT takes a lot of horsepower, and some of those applications drag the machine down.  I also want a machine that can handle whatever the game market tosses out for at least the next few years.   The higher I go spec-wise the better.   

We'll see.   I may end up waiting for the end of year inventory clearances like I originally planned for, but maybe not.  My old G15 keyboard is starting to wear out among other things.