Frunobulax

Forever. If it bothers me, I'll move in front of them, which would be really easy to do because they're using hover.

Not impossible, I've done it a bunch of times. What we did was I kited Mary through the ruins while potshotting the rest of the mobs the rest of the group whittled down whenever her pathing gave me breathing room to help out, until she's alone and then it's a textbook slog, as pathing allows. It's not pretty, and it sure isn't quick, and I'd never bother with this while sober, but it is for sure totally doable.

I always have some kind of idea and then I try to create it through my costume and power choices (usually). I've only ever used one costume that I did not create myself. I made a zombie mm and I'd never seen the default costume before as mm's were new to me, so when it came up I decided to use my original idea on some other character, and kept what I thought was a funny random costume, a Satanic Gimp.

I have made a lot of characters and I am way past slotting properly, now I just try to find the lines I am comfortable with for any given combo as they actually play out as far as non-damage considerations go, unless I am leaning into a gimmick/concept for the hell of it, and then I build for whatever that is specifically, and slap the basics on around it.

I like it when the enemies fight back. My only bad pug experiences are when people are being rude to each other or something like that. I can't really help to teach a person a thing about attitude if that's even possible with them, but for everything else, having to actually play the game does not bother me. If somebody's at least trying, that's enough for me to enjoy myself. If not, I can just prioritize getting myself through the content instead of clearing for/vendor rezzing the dead. Like people have mentioned above, you can just gimp whatever with some purples and reds. Mostly reds. The nuclear option of mild preparation is almost always there. And for the very few things that can't be solved with some consumables, that's the attraction for that specific content in the first place.

My agro cap onto myself

Almost always superjump, it's what I really missed when I stopped playing coh, and mourned when it was gone. I love jumping around. In fact, from playing years of league quake and making/playing Rocket Jump maps/vertical duel maps and then later on playing some games where it was a good tactic to constantly obscure my hitbox from invisible players looking to alpha-strike me, I can't stop jumping around in video games in general. Also I have some permanent injuries and superjumping around is a good way of confirming that I'm still ok to play for awhile, in a cadence that's low-impact for me, basically if it hurts, everything else will hurt more, it's time to log. And when it doesn't hurt, I feel free, and continue jumping around to confirm that it's a good day. But the main reason is that I just think it's neat.

btw you can just fight whatever at 50 and make decent insp, and drops, and maybe merits depending on what you do. And if you actually try to make inf, you have enough 50+ characters that a round of daily tinpex's would be a decent income. But if you're bound and determined to farm, you can mail yourself inspiration and simply stack it while trying to farm with low resources, and converting the insp you get in battle which is something you often want to do at any level of gear as a farmer anyways. You can search something like "city of heroes macros to make red" to find lots of example macros, and you could make some macros for purples as well until you're geared. And you could farm on city maps where you can engage each group on your own time until you're ready to fight your cap nonstop. The raw inf that you make 1-50 is negligible you didn't really miss much, most of the worthwhile money you can make 1-50 is from drops and merits, which the XP buff does not prevent. This io stuff is overwhelming at first, but you'll eventually gear some characters to your liking, and then everything they do will be pure profit.

Not just deliberate powerleveling either. Sometimes (especially on the busiest server) pretty much every group lfm is either a speed, or ends up with multiple people capable of completely overpowering the content with gear and sets that didn't even exist when it was created. A newbie doesn't know that in modern COH for a vast majority of the content if they want to get into an actual fight where people might have to do more then watch (if they can even get there in time to see) one player push a 2-button combo and then (maybe) mop up some almost-dead bosses, they have to deliberately curate the group and settings towards achieving that. And even then, most of the stuff that is accessible to new players on their way up is completely stompable on any settings for anybody with a bit of resources and experience. Pugs in general can be a wasteland of powercreep where it's probably hard to learn much of anything at all, except that it's really, really easy to level up quickly.

There is stuff going on with lots of people and this isn't the place for that at all, unless they feel like chiming in themselves, imo. Some good, some bad, some crazy, lots of new games as well, that's life. I can't speak for anybody else and I like to listen to music when I play so I ignore discord whenever possible and go on work-related break for months at a time so I do miss out on a lot, but as far as I can tell the general consensus is that people are grateful for the new stuff. I sure am, all I really care about is fighting enemies that live long enough for everybody to actually use their stuff and be useful and we can all go full ham and chase digits without taking gameplay away from anybody else, that's what's fun and interesting to me. I play when I feel like mechanically engaging in the combat (ok mostly the movement) of this game and no shiny can entice me if I'm not in the mood, nor can any grind deter me when I am. I have no idea how many badges I have, I'm sure it's a disturbing number spread out across a mentally ill amount of characters.

One of the neat things about having processed oxygen for awhile is that in the information age, I constantly see younger people explaining how they don't like/do like/can't handle/can't do without X because they're too old, and of course I feel the exact opposite about whatever X happens to be.

New players to HC: +1 is a perfectly reasonable setting. Please do not be deterred from using settings that may run the risk of possibly creating a situation in which a monster fights back in some small way. And don't be afraid to filter cretins and miscreants with the /ignore command either, today's ridiculous tantrum can end up preventing tomorrows joyless carry.

Yeah op, I get you, this game can sometimes feel like it's nothing but bored farmers completely overwhelming content that has not been updated to reflect the set system. But of course there are also many, many new/freshly returned people for whom +0 is completely appropriate. And people who are used to fast tf runs and are used to the time it generally takes for those. A bump in difficulty can make some of the older tf's potentially take much longer with a pug. All you can do is provide an alternative as you have been doing. Advertise kill mosts/nonspeed, try modifiers such as only accepting players lvl 49 or lower for ITF (so much fun), there are plenty of people who don't feel like they always have to take the path of least resistance. Just always be clear in your lfg, especially when doing the tfs people need badges from as many people see those as a necessary chore to get through (a sentiment you may even come to share some day, like when you play a toon with no worthwhile ae at lvl on a synapse). Personally I like all styles of play for different reasons, and I have met many players who seem to feel the same way, when given the choice, we'll show up.

it's my awesome zerg bubble for rushing objectives (can click through bubble) and then herding everything for a buffed t9 blast and waste buildup because I forgot to turn pff off

A few billion in cash, I suppose if I was to add up the cash on all of my alts that I keep on them for pd buffs. I don't keep much cash as cash though. If money is going to sit there, it sits in bids. I have absolutely no clue how much I have in assets but when I contemplate an estimate in my head, it's in Carl Sagan's voice

I actually enjoy TW now, thanks for your hard work!

You've been the one misinterpreting what I've been posting, and now you're deflecting and projecting and hurling strawmen. You straight up laughed at me while completely ignoring what I actually posted, and then went on to continue to babble about a period of time which I was clearly not discussing, and which was not central to my point anyways, which you completely sidestepped. You are playing games and using me as a pretense to prop yourself up while not actually addressing my messages as I wrote them, and now you're doing something similar with more gaslighting in the mix, such as this post in which you accuse me of thinking you're going to take plvl somehow while quoting my post where I put forth the opinion that nobody could take it away if they tried. You're right, we're done talking about this. Plvl'ing has always existed in this game and population has waxed and waned anyways despite your feelings on the matter, you can acknowledge reality or not, I don't care/won't see it.

No you didn't, I'm talking about before mentor etc. And anyways, my actual point was that it's always going to happen and it always has been happening. Whether or not I was plvl'ing my kids and friends as hard as was humanly possible doesn't even matter. I started seeing ways to get exps faster then the intended paths within a few minutes of this games existence when it went live, and so did lots of other people and yet there was no massive drop off of players right away when people started to plvl. You can't really stop it in a game like this without changing it into something else entirely. If mobs give xps, there will be some path of least resistance, and if you go the route of for instance granting exps through mission completion, then there will just be another path of least resistance which probably won't ever be stamped out either (example: DDO and the dungeon alerts that screwed newbies over far more then it stopped any zerger). Maybe there is some magical answer but I doubt it's going to come from a tiny volunteer team when major studios have tried and failed for years to curtail such things.

I seem to remember taking people to tf range before the sidekick stuff came in not being nearly as fast as what I can accomplish in ae with multiple accounts in this day and age

And always! I remember plvling my kids and guildies from another game when this game was brand new with my fire/fire tank. I even I used to reroll him over and over, I don't remember exactly why but I know it was to level people. It sure wasn't as good as the stuff you can pull off these days (and we were only taking people to tf range), but it still worked. You're right, it IS a feature! If power is gained through experience, there is always going to be people finding efficiencies.

oh yeah well ALL of my toons can tank

This. I like drops/inf but its not a primary motivation for me. I play on itf's because they're full of mobs that can take a few hits and can live long enough that they are worth debuffing etc and I can produce or help others produce some nice big numbers and have some satisfying fights where any of my toons will always have something to do no matter my at/combo or that of the group. And on most kill all itfs I usually see multiple people who I know have the resources to be well past being concerned about merits/drops/xp as well, in my experience I'd say that people doing it just to do it probably make up a significant portion of the people who join kill alls specifically.

I don't need an excuse, I don't want to, and frankly I don't need to. All I do is pve and I know all of the content now. If this bothers you, that's your problem. Usually the only time I go in discord is for a weekly rhw with some specific folks, and even then I only join because it's mandatory and since it's so short, I don't really mind. Nobody's ever said anything in it that I've actually needed to hear. Same for record attempts etc, I might join now and then if I'm asked to, but if I genuinely needed to hear anybody saying anything, I would not belong on such a run. I want to be able to take phone calls, or talk with my family irl, or I want to listen to music or podcasts. I've let my kids listen to what they want for their entire lives, they're finally in their own houses now, and I have decades of music to catch up on. I'd rather not play at all then constantly have to listen to redundant bs for a game that was created without voicechat.

There are lots of groups going on, that's pretty much all I do. Personally when I run groups I usually completely ignore people who are lfg in channel, and only rarely look at people who are using the lfg tool simply because I've tried in the past and often people don't want to do what I'm doing. Fair enough of course, I usually run tf's and there's lots of reasons people might not want to do a tf, but I don't feel like sending a bunch of tells to people who are selective about what they want to join, but have not made that fact known in their lfg message, that got old pretty quickly. When I am lfm and I see somebody who is lfg who could join what I'm doing, I assume that if they wanted in, they'd send a tell and I'd just be bothering them to ask them if they want in.

Nothing, really. I'll put it this way, I quit WoW when they put bg's in, and I had considered it to be far too blue before then but was in "wait and see" mode with my guild. I don't care one bit about canned pvp, I don't even see it as actual pvp if you can drop in and out and level/gear in pve and escape any consequences and confrontations at will, it's just a minigame to me. I like mmo pvp where it it mandatory and shapes the world through player-made rules, I like the politics, spies, alliances and betrayals, the eternal struggle between pk and anti for the hearts and minds (and corpses) of psychotic lowbies and such. Although if I was a roleplayer in coh I am sure I'd love it, seems like a lot of potential for that. I've made my peace with my favoured style of pvp (open world ffa with no place being 100% "safe" ever) not being viable in this day and age, anything that comes close to catering to what I like dies fairly quickly, coh's version of "pvp" is a pale shadow of what I want and it would only tease me.