DoctorDitko

Happy Hogswatch to all!

In most modern MMOs, the fun starts at 50. Here, for some of us, that's when the fun starts to end. I'd even say -- for me -- 90% of the fun happens between levels 10 and 49.

Personally, I love the Jingle Jet, which is unlimited use for the month it lasts, and the self-rez, which is on a separate timer from the P2W version. And for certain characters, the Golden Rings can be magnificent! Oh, and you get badges. But rescuing Baby New Year and fighting the Winter Lady offer all of the above as rewards when you finish.

Welcome home! Here's a pro tip: open your Powers window, right-click on Double XP Booster, and select Delete Power. It works for any power you dislike. Now you may buy a 50% XP Booster in its place (which will earn 50% inf) or just ignore the P2W vendor until you can afford niceties such as the Team Transporter, Reveal, or the ever-useful Inner Inspiration. Personally, I like Self-Destruct, which works to dodge debt if you are about to be defeated, and also makes a handy way to get to the Base Rez Ring or the local Hospital. I'm on Torch mostly, and always glad to team with another Vet.

First off, let me say I admire and support the real world Heroes who fight fires, tend the sick, help the troubled, research medicines, and keep us safe. May all the forces of random chance, deities of all stripes, and people of good will bless and take care of them! But this is not about them. This is about the sillier, crazier, or campier Superheroes of our world. They usually wear outfits that could be right out of our beloved costume builder. I find them inordinately fascinating! E.g.: The late Captain Sticky, who seldom wielded his Twinkie bazooka -- but who could park his Stickymobile in front of a nursing home and cause them to frantically clean up their behavior. He also made strides in protecting consumers in a day when there were all too few such advocates. Angle-Grinder Man, a UK hero who rescues motorists whose cars are immobilized by the questionable practice of "booting" or "clamping." (The Lockpicking Lawyer has some advice for a less destructive solution. He would merit an entry merely for his exposure of shoddy gun safes, but curiously refuses to wear a costume.) And Captain Disillusion, a mighty YouTuber indeed who exposes, explains, or debunks so very many misleading or falsified videos. I hope you enjoy learning of these champions! Do you know of any others?

I have a Bots/FF Mastermind, and I was not in any way whelmed. One of my first characters, entirely concept-based, was a Gravity/FF controller, who was little fun solo, but good on teams. Recent buffs, like better/faster Propel, and the finger-saving FF group effect, made him much more fun all 'round. I still don't know if anyone else would enjoy the combo, but if it fits your concept, go for it!

Ah, you are not wrong. The DRM that writes to off-limits areas of your hard drive was the deal-breaker for me.

Probably a false flag endevour by H&R Block!

I find that Storm and Dark don't synergize particularly well, but I don't see the set as gimped. Storm/Ice works very well, as the slows in Ice magnify the effects of Storm nicely. Plus the ever-popular fish-flop! I strongly suggest the TP pool as your travel power set, since being able to pop intro (and out of) a bunch of baddies is nice. Adding Fold Space is great as a way to help Storm really shine. (If you want to feel truly, embarrassingly OP, try a Storm/Storm/Mace Mastery [for Scorpion Shield] Defender with TP/Fold Space. Forecast: nasty weather ahead for the bad guys!) Incidentally, a friend prone to gfx headaches finds that turning off particles makes both Storm Cell and Cat 5 nearly invisible.

You are so right! RTD2 seems to have matured as a writer, but c'mon! Can't he at least live up to "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?" "Triple-drive the particle manifesto?" "Vindicate the cyberline and roast the hyperfeeds?" "Inculcate the plexidrones?" "Shatterfry the positrons?" C'mon, RTD2! You can up your game! Ask one of many sciencey Whovians out there!

I was surprisingly pleased by the 3 specials. RTD2 seems to have matured as writer, which is nice. He still does the worst technobabble, though! I never thought NPH could outdo his Music Meister, but he certainly did! Ncuti looks amazing, and I'm looking forward to his run.

As Kazran Sardick would say:

I'd suggest a carrot combined with the stick. What if there was a badge for NOT ditching the spawns? And definitely one for cleaning up after other people!

No, and dammit, I thought I'd seen everything the game had on offer! Thanks, and I'll keep an eye out!

Me, too! Champs just cried out to be a computer game, and the wasted opportunity still stings. An artist friend and I pitched a computer game that was a pretty shameless Champs ripoff: Electric Heroes. No takers, because "No one plays superhero games!" Uh, maybe 'cause there weren't any good ones? (I still remember reviewing Superman for Game News. >shudder<) CoH is as close as I've ever seen, but Champs didn't have the rails. You could make gloriously unbalanced characters, like a guy who was indestructible and... nothing else. He was a proto-Tick without the mightiness, but a similar attitude. Such fun!

Wow! Just... Wow! I had no idea we had it so well. I have a friend who bought a lifetime subscription for DC Online, so I tried it and thought they were greedy. They are amateurs compared to that evilness! The few things I liked about DC Online were the voice actors -- IIRC Kevin Conroy (the one, true Batman) voiced Batman -- and the idea that Gotham was always in nighttime and Metropolis always sunny. But they gave you "rewards" that required money to unlock, and the costume stuff was much as you described. Ugh! I have never found a game that made me feel super-heroic as much as COH does, and Homecoming made it all gooderer!

Yeah. Jack had an unresistable nerf-bat auto-attack. He was an opinionated game dev, and apparently one of those guys that's great to know IRL, but turns into a were-asshat online. The game was vastly better after he left (at least until monetization and micro-transactions infested it). But UltraAlt is 100% correct, Jack's most heinous crime was taking Champions, an amazing, organically balanced, possibly Turing-complete*, TTRPG -- it's main weakness was that it cried out for a computer to handle its laborious mechanics -- and turning it into the abomination that was Champions Online. That said, Statesman's death, like Superman's, was very poorly handled. Want to see it done well? Check out the death of Thor versus Jortmangandr in Walt Simonson's Thor #380! Now that's how you kill off a hero! * I never met a comic character it couldn't model, and at the very least, I once wrote a virus in it.

Excellent! And good on yaz for finding your strategies. I have ADD, and I generally find watching videos almost interminably slow; I'd much rather read than wait for someone to get to the point. But, say, learning a card trick is better to watch than describe. We all have our preferences, but that doesn't mean that all students fall into one of four categories like D&D character classes. It's best to tailor the teaching to the subject matter rather than pigeonholing the students. Here's a guy who can plead the case much better than I: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-learning-styles-myth/ Hell, pigeonholing people is almost always a bad idea. We're all special cases, and, as far as I know, very few of us are pigeons!

Wouldn't be the first time teachers taught utter BS! (I work at a university, and not long ago I overheard a professor spouting the discredited "there are Visual, Audible, and Tangible learners" hypothesis. What is true is that actual experience -- doing things themselves -- drives home lessons better than any form of presentation.)

Not as far-fetched as it sounds. The yo-yo, like the boomerang, was originally a hunting weapon. (I used to live in the Philippines, and they made sure we knew it every year in school. They were roughly the size of a dinner plate, IIRC. You hid up in a tree and waited for some animal to walk under you, then >whammo!< walked the dog on its head!)

Hmmm. Mine mostly fall into Magic or Tech. That said, to my mind, Batman and Superman would both be Natural origin, Bruce through training and Clark through being a perfectly normal Kryptonian. Although Batman does verge on Tech, depending on how far along the Batman <--> Iron Man spectrum he is with his current creative team. (Batman Beyond? Could make a case either way.) And a pet peeve is Mutants. You don't mutate when exposed to radiation, dammit! You either get sick and die or your DNA is damaged and your kids are the mutants!

Wait, there's another way to get to Cimerora than by using the LFG teleport? Who knew? Yeah, I have several characters with the AH teleports left over, but they might as well not have them: I can't bring myself to "waste" the unique, irreplaceable powers. Silly, I know, but back in the old days when I really knew my way around the City (I was unemployed for a while, and the $15/month was my entire entertainment budget) it was a valuable part of my "get there fastest" strategy. Oh, and I eventually found out you could buy and sell stuff at the Auction Houses, too! Such a deal!

His and JMD's run on Justice League was epic. Way to redeem a book that had fallen as far as it had! ("Justice League Detroit?" What were they thinking?!")

A friend who knows well more about the market than I says there are currently extensive attempts to manipulate it. Someone who never took an economics course, and has more inf than int. (Not me; I'm tied at best!) So, I guess we can soldier on, posting and buying stuff at a proper price, or say "Screw it!" and win by not playing. Person-to-person trades and base storage still work, and I don't know about you, but I have a bunch pf Brainstorms to burn!

Oh, does it rez, too? I hadn't noticed. Agree it's a contender for best power.