Highest Compliments

Something I should have mentioned before, which just occurred to me.
Hype and Syn dinged 37 sometime early Friday evening and, as we’d already planned to get the Numina Task Force done during the weekend, figured ‘what the heck’ and set about seeing if we could get a group together.
This turned out to work really well — the range of the TF was level 35-38, Zepher-Storm was (a) interested and (b) level 38, and we got three ‘fifties’ who were willing to come and play with us auto-gimped down to 38 for the duration: Shock, Kinetica, and Malcalypse.
Now… I was expecting things to go well — in my estimation, Zepher, Kin, Mal, and Shock represent four of the best players I’ve ever played with when it comes to doing what those character’s do ((I mean… Kinetica is an Energy blaster who knocks mobs ONTO my ice/burn patches.)) — I and Syn-player have played with all of them a LOT as Hang Time, and I thought I knew what to expect.
Honestly? I entirely underestimated them, because I’d never seen them from the Tanker angle.
Best TF team I’ve been on — possibly the best team Hype & Syn have been on, period. As I said, everyone was playing what I think of as the character they are ‘best’ at, and I’m including myself and Syn’s player in there — I gravitate to tank-mode even playing HT and Strat… and Syn’s abilities suit that player right. down. to. the. ground.
You know those nasty first couple missions they throw at you to discourage people from just doing the TF on a lark? Yeah, we blew through those things — Syn and Hype were a level lower than everyone else in the group, and thus all the baddies were a bit harder, but since we usually run with the difficulty dial set to Invincible anyway, it just didn’t matter.
The big bad guy at the end? The one that uses a club made from a tree and Cadillac? Yeah…
Cakewalk. Hell, we help him frozen for part of the (very short) fight.
There was some nastiness during the TF due to a bug with the ambush-code that sends ambushes aimed at the highest level character in the group BEFORE exemps are considered (and thus we were getting level-50 ambushes when everyone was gimped to 38), and Zepher was ‘gimped’ from 38 to 38 and getting no xp (known bug), but all in all, it was great.
But that wasn’t the best part.
See, the Numina TF sort of has a sequel. It’s called the Eden Trial. Trials are a bit different from Task Forces in that they are (a) timed (b) nasty as HELL. The Eden Trial, specifically, nearly requires that you have a tank who can handle MASSIVE aggro from MASSIVE groups, and that the group has the ability to take out very large groups of bad guys, very fast.
The Issue Five downgrade upgrade is coming out soon, and a lot of the stuff coming out with it is going to make the already-damn-hard Eden trial… really friggin’ difficult. This has created a sort of Gold Rush mentality surrounding this Trial — “Get it done before it can’t BE done.”
Hype and Syn aren’t going to be high enough level to run the Trial until after Issue Five is out… for sure.
I don’t care. I want to run that damn thing in Issue Five — Frankly, just to prove that it can still be done and show folks they were wrong.
I mentioned this during the TF once and two of the fifties said “yeah, we should do that — I don’t have that badge yet.” Cool.
Still not the best part.
We got done with the TF — went back to Numina, took the team photo…
One of the players said “Listen, when you two (Hype and Syn) are ready to do the Trial, call me. I want to do it with you.”
Another player chimed in with a strong affirmative: “I would very much like to do with with the both of you.”
Hype and Syn have grown up a bit in a vacuum — grown up quickly for all that, but in general, we play a duo and we don’t need anyone else — we kick much ass and take many names and, unless it comes down to a task force that requires a minimum number of people, we don’t group… a lot.
Some, but not alot. We’ve leveled up fast, though, and as a result, we’re getting to a point where the Task Force Twins can start hanging out with the “main” characters of the people we know.
Those folks for whom I hold very high regard as players ran a task force with us — largely for the first time — and when they were done they looked at this ball-buster of a trial and said “I’d like to do that, with you two.”
Translation: You’re good. Please look us up in the future.
“It’s a pleasure working with professionals.”
I love those two characters. Love the story they have going on, and love playing them. Most of all , I love knowing we’re playing them well — hearing it from people who know what they’re talking about.
Really really felt like we’d ‘arrived’, right at that moment.
Still smiling about it.