All Hail Krypto the Wonder Dog
Jan. 19th, 2007 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2I've been playing City of Heroes quite a bit lately. I've been on some very good teams. We've plowed through missions and racked up the experience, and enjoyed a little fun banter on the side.
Somehow it's always the other teams that leave a lasting impression...
So, I was playing my old empathy defender on Pinnacle. Basically a healer with virtually no offensive ability. I get a random team invite, and I accept. Normally I'm of the opinion that accepting blind invites can often lead to interesting things happening, whether good or bad, so I like to accept them. But especially playing my no-offense healer, I need a team to get anywhere.
My new team leader is Krypto the Wonder Dog. Part of the new costume additions that come with the City of Villians expansion include "beast" legs, arms, and heads. Krypto is some sort of super-powered heroic beast-man.
I barely have time to notice that he's the only other person in the group, and he's a defender, too (where's the offense going to come from?), when he exclaims, "I have my own supergroup!" I say that's cool. In fact, anyone who reaches level 10 in this game can form their own supergroup -- it's not hard, and it requires no help from anyone else. You just talk to the right npc and fill out a form, and bingo! You're a supergroup. And, in fact, my healer is in a supergroup that consists solely of two of my characters and three of Toms characters, all of whom are almost never used for anything.
Anyway, based on Krypto's obvious pride and excitement about his supergroup, I gather that he's a fairly young kid. This impression is reinforced by the fact that their name is spelled wrong ("Super Dog Patroll" or something like that). He goes on to extol the virtues of his group ("The first five member get automatically promoted!")and asks me to join, but I decline.
Then another person joins our group. At this point, I notice two things. I'm level 19. The new member (a scrapper, so we have some offense now) is only level 15. But Krypto is only level 10. That would explain his excitement about the group -- he's just reached a high enough level to form it.
I start to say how this isn't going to work, but the new guy tells me to sidekick Krypto. Hmm. Okay, that actually could work. Then Krypto sets one of my missions. Typically a group will pick missions from the highest level in the group, on the theory that you get more powerful enemies worth more experience that way. But since I can't very well solo my healer, there's a good chance I've had this mission for a long time. And I haven't played this character much in well over two years, so I really have no idea how old the mission might be.
It turns out that the mission is maybe a level or two old. Not too bad, really, and given the fact that our main damage-dealer is four levels below me, that's good. He's got two healers to look after him, and he's fighting bad guys a couple of levels above him. Somehow this weird group might actually work.
All of this probably wouldn't have been very memorable, if not for what Krypto did during the mission. We cleaned out the first hallway and raced down the corridor to the next room. Krypto lagged behind. He yelled something about a computer, and that he was going to hack it. I had no idea what he was talking about. After a minute he was done, and rejoined us. But right after our next battle, he had to hack into another computer.
It turned out, there were computer terminals scattered here and there throughout the mission. They were strictly decorative -- if it's something you're supposed to interact with, it will typically flash and make noise so you can't miss it. What Krypto was doing was running up to these terminals and doing an emote which would produce a laptop on a stand and show you typing on it. This was his method of "attempting to hack the computer". He'd stop, do this for 30 seconds, and then declare that he was done. What the results were, he never said, but at every computer terminal we came across he'd say, "I'm on it!" and go into his hacking animation while we stood around waiting for him to finish.
I dunno, it just make me laugh. On a lot of teams people probably would have been angry at him for wasting time and not working to solve the mission as quickly as possible. But after all, it's a game. Adults often forget what games of pretend are all about. For some reason, you want the game to be immersive, you might want to roleplay -- but pretending to hack every computer we came across was the kind of thing only a kid would think to do.
The other guy in the group went right along with it. After the mission was over he said his daughter was awake and he had to go. That made sense to me -- he's a father, he knows about games of pretend.
Anyway that one mission with Krypto entertained me more than anything else I've done the last two weeks. ^_^
Somehow it's always the other teams that leave a lasting impression...
So, I was playing my old empathy defender on Pinnacle. Basically a healer with virtually no offensive ability. I get a random team invite, and I accept. Normally I'm of the opinion that accepting blind invites can often lead to interesting things happening, whether good or bad, so I like to accept them. But especially playing my no-offense healer, I need a team to get anywhere.
My new team leader is Krypto the Wonder Dog. Part of the new costume additions that come with the City of Villians expansion include "beast" legs, arms, and heads. Krypto is some sort of super-powered heroic beast-man.
I barely have time to notice that he's the only other person in the group, and he's a defender, too (where's the offense going to come from?), when he exclaims, "I have my own supergroup!" I say that's cool. In fact, anyone who reaches level 10 in this game can form their own supergroup -- it's not hard, and it requires no help from anyone else. You just talk to the right npc and fill out a form, and bingo! You're a supergroup. And, in fact, my healer is in a supergroup that consists solely of two of my characters and three of Toms characters, all of whom are almost never used for anything.
Anyway, based on Krypto's obvious pride and excitement about his supergroup, I gather that he's a fairly young kid. This impression is reinforced by the fact that their name is spelled wrong ("Super Dog Patroll" or something like that). He goes on to extol the virtues of his group ("The first five member get automatically promoted!")and asks me to join, but I decline.
Then another person joins our group. At this point, I notice two things. I'm level 19. The new member (a scrapper, so we have some offense now) is only level 15. But Krypto is only level 10. That would explain his excitement about the group -- he's just reached a high enough level to form it.
I start to say how this isn't going to work, but the new guy tells me to sidekick Krypto. Hmm. Okay, that actually could work. Then Krypto sets one of my missions. Typically a group will pick missions from the highest level in the group, on the theory that you get more powerful enemies worth more experience that way. But since I can't very well solo my healer, there's a good chance I've had this mission for a long time. And I haven't played this character much in well over two years, so I really have no idea how old the mission might be.
It turns out that the mission is maybe a level or two old. Not too bad, really, and given the fact that our main damage-dealer is four levels below me, that's good. He's got two healers to look after him, and he's fighting bad guys a couple of levels above him. Somehow this weird group might actually work.
All of this probably wouldn't have been very memorable, if not for what Krypto did during the mission. We cleaned out the first hallway and raced down the corridor to the next room. Krypto lagged behind. He yelled something about a computer, and that he was going to hack it. I had no idea what he was talking about. After a minute he was done, and rejoined us. But right after our next battle, he had to hack into another computer.
It turned out, there were computer terminals scattered here and there throughout the mission. They were strictly decorative -- if it's something you're supposed to interact with, it will typically flash and make noise so you can't miss it. What Krypto was doing was running up to these terminals and doing an emote which would produce a laptop on a stand and show you typing on it. This was his method of "attempting to hack the computer". He'd stop, do this for 30 seconds, and then declare that he was done. What the results were, he never said, but at every computer terminal we came across he'd say, "I'm on it!" and go into his hacking animation while we stood around waiting for him to finish.
I dunno, it just make me laugh. On a lot of teams people probably would have been angry at him for wasting time and not working to solve the mission as quickly as possible. But after all, it's a game. Adults often forget what games of pretend are all about. For some reason, you want the game to be immersive, you might want to roleplay -- but pretending to hack every computer we came across was the kind of thing only a kid would think to do.
The other guy in the group went right along with it. After the mission was over he said his daughter was awake and he had to go. That made sense to me -- he's a father, he knows about games of pretend.
Anyway that one mission with Krypto entertained me more than anything else I've done the last two weeks. ^_^
