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*waves banana* 🙂

*prepares Tetanus arrow* Bend over, buff incoming!

Congratulations on your species reassignment surgery, Bill. It takes a truly courageous person to accept himself as a Rikti monkey, and your willingness to take that leap to let your inner self shine should serve as an inspiration to everyone who... Oh. >.> <.< Um... happy farming?

Chips, dips, chains, whips, you know, your basic high school orgy type of thing.

You are the protagonist in Co*, not Statesman or Recluse. You. This is your story, not theirs, and anything that happens to them is incidental. They're plot devices, nothing more. There are millions of other plot devices waiting to be used.

I've always been slightly out of the loop in regard to news and current events, so it was only a couple of days ago that I learned how many people have died trying to capture "selfies". Death by train. Death by electrocution. Death by drowning. Falling from great heights, self-inflicted gunshot to the head, grenade (GRENADE!)... all in the hope of winning the popularity contest which social media accounts represent (in my opinion). I'd much rather be alive and unpopular than famous for winning a Darwin Award.

And became a walking fusion reactor! Now, he fights crime and teaches people that only justice (and the power of the atom) can prevail!

They're villains. Violation of laws, societal and natural, is what they do. It's in the job description. And the handbook.

Steel Canyon is the best place to play chicken with the ground.

That would depend on the voice actor. Clancy Brown? He'd own Recluse, figuratively and literally. Rainn Wilson? Recluse's shoe-shine boy.

Defenders are what I consider good generalists.

The inherents of brutes, stalkers and corruptors always felt underwhelming to me, and lacked a compelling differentiation from corresponding heroic archetypes. Dominators and VEATs lack coherence. They're trying to be all things to all people, and being none well. Masterminds were designed better, but they aren't sufficient to compensate for the sense of disappointment I always experienced when traveling around the Rogue Isles. The zones lack the immersive scale and thrill of places like Steel Canyon and Skyway City. Hero-side zones are grand, imposing, exciting to be in and move through. Villain-side zones are... arbitrary filler between mission doors.

Haikus... not my thing. I like nice, long sentences. And paragraphs... mmm...

I don't love you. I've been having an affair. With the water heater. We're leaving together. I'm filing for alimony. You can keep your floozie blow-up dolls. 🤪

Your entire premise is based on this piece misinformation, and it is patently and demonstrably untrue. Prior to merit rewards, on the original servers, a Trick Arrows defender or controller could generate 7.5-10 million inf* per hour running radio missions. Below x4/x8. Solo. Trick Arrows. This was how I financed all of my alts and paid for multiple multi-billion inf* builds. On the Homecoming servers, one can generate 2-4 times as much inf*, without counting merit rewards. A build using common level 25-30 IOs was less expensive than a build using SOs, and slightly more efficient, on the original servers. On the Homecoming servers, recipe, salvage and crafted IO prices are aren't even a tenth of what they were. Frankenslotting with select inexpensive set IOs is even cheaper and significantly more efficient. On those two points alone, your assertion is disprovable. Going further, you imply that, for some reason, anyone "needs" to generate an inf* income of multiple millions per hour. This is fallacious. Inf* requirements are dictated by each individual player's preferred pace and performance level. Someone who prefers casual radio missions has no inherent need for an "uber" build with multiple expensive IO sets and maximal bonuses, and is therefore generating inf* at a pace appropriate for him/her. In fact, not one player, in the history of this game, has ever "needed" inf* generation on the scale you think should be mandatory. There is a finite limit to spending, after all, and beyond that, accumulation of inf* is little more than a goal unto itself. Additionally, this game was, and still is, an MMO, with an ingrained necessity for player retention. One of the ways this is accomplished is through controlling progress by careful regulation of things like XP gain and inf* generation. This is not theory, this is science. We, humans, typically place very little value on that which is obtained with no effort or time. We lose interest in the shiny toy and leave to find another shiny toy. This behavior is detrimental in an MMO, resulting in a notable decline in player retention. Furthermore, your proposal would result in wildly spiralling inflation. People would be playing significantly less to acquire the inf* to achieve their goals, which would lead to fewer recipe and salvage drops. Prices on everything would climb rapidly when the existing supply of recipes and salvage diminishes and is not replenished at the previous rate. Even with merits, converters and the Homecoming team seeding salvage, the market would experience massive fluctuations and increases in prices across the board. In the end, your altered inf* accumulation rate would do no real good, because everyone would be right back where they were before. The only notable difference would be the additional zeroes on the prices. No-one "needs" 500,000,000 inf* per hour. No-one needs 30,000,000 per hour. In truth, no-one needs 1,000,000 per hour. All anyone needs is enough to pay for the enhancements they want, and the game already supplies that. People have to play for more than an hour to get it, but, in all honesty, if waiting more than an hour to kit out a character is such a hardship for anyone, they probably shouldn't be playing an MMO... or anything more complex than Checkers. Lastly, "income inequality" is inapplicable in this context. There is no glass ceiling here. There is no differentiation based on color or sexual preference. There is no limitation imposed on one player which does not exist in equal measure for every other player. Everyone has the option to play the market, or farm in AE missions, or run task forces back to back. Everyone can achieve equal inf* generation rates. There is no inequality in Co*, income or otherwise, that I have ever witnessed.

Surprisingly, none, despite my interest in several comic book heroes. My characters were always designed around a specific costume piece which sparked a new concept. Co* actually pulled me out of comic book hero obsessions and drove me to explore my creative side.

You think everything needs procs. You added procs to your washing machine and turned your super-suit into a fishnet body stocking. You dropped out of medical school when you discovered that proctology had nothing to do with procs. You even tried to "enhance" oatmeal with procs (those scars really don't look too bad, by the way). 😛

Emotional development isn't a product of puberty. It's a result of time, experience and intellectual capacity. The timeline of the game indicates that his confrontation with Blue Steel occurred in August of '02, and it's only a couple of years after that when players encounter the Clockwork King in his present form, so he is still, essentially, an adolescent or early adult at that point. Point being, he can grow up, meaning, learn to behave in an adult manner, given time. A lot of story potential there for a future task/strike force.

Man-scaping isn't going to be sufficient. There's a whole topiary garden somewhere in there.

There were numerous predictions that the world would end in 1999. Paragon City has experienced several apocalyptic situations. Prince indicated that the best parties would be in 1999 (and that we should revel as though that time had already arrived). Party is a word interchangable with team. Conclusion: it's 1999 in Paragon City. Also, something something Freemasons something something Illuminati something something NWO something something Mender Silos something plot.

As has been pointed out in many threads, the djinn is out of the bottle. It won't matter if the eventual licensing agreement fails to reach fruition, or forces all but one acknowledged server to shut down, or NCSoft throws their collective hands in the air and says, "Whatever. Keep it, just stop bothering us." There will never again be a day when there are no Co* servers. There will never be a single point of failure. It's in too many hands for that to happen now. And if the situation did play out with only one licensed team or server group, the HC team would lose nothing by offering to fold the other teams in, on separate servers with separate rules, as part of a collective, centralized community. If anything, they'd benefit from the increase in players and more stable revenue flow, as well as having more options to offer without detracting from their own focus. Having one team singled out for legitimacy doesn't mean all other teams, efforts or ideas have to go away. Especially not in consideration of the situation which led to the dissemination of the server code.

One team or server group laboring under the necessity to be all things to all players will, inevitably, crumble under the weight of expectations. Different teams and server groups can offer different things, and adopt or discard ideas from one another as befits each and to the benefit of the players supporting them. It's not a competition, beyond the obvious need to attract enough players willing to assist with server expenses. It's offering all players more options.

Inspirations. I was always certain I'd need them for the next spawn. However difficult a fight seemed, I couldn't convince myself to use inspirations, because the next one might be harder and I had no guarantee of the "right" inspirations dropping later. All of my characters clung to their starter inspirations until I could buy the more powerful versions, at which point I'd clear the tray and stock a specific selection "just in case I need them", then let those gather dust until the next tier became available. I've done this in every game with consumables that I've ever played. Regardless of availability, I just can't bring myself to "risk" using them. I'm always absolutely certain that I'll regret using what I have because it means I won't have them "when I really need them".

I go. I hunt. I kill Skulz.

I can't play at all and I know more about the current state of the game, AH, AE, Incarnate process, farming situation, etc. And if the OP is old enough to have loin fruit, he/she had better be grown up enough to handle a little abrasiveness over his/her willful ignorance, and do what he/she expects the larva to do - learn from it.