GastlyGibus

Writing this at midnight in the back of my truck, so apologies if I ramble or make lots of typos. "Fun" for me, in the context of video-games, boils down to two words: contribution, and reward. Contribution is what I'm bringing to the table. What am I doing to make the situation different? That's one of the appeals of video-games for me, is knowing that 100 different people can play the same game and have wildly-different outcomes. It's not like a ride at an amusement park, where everyone experiences the same exact thing (though don't get me wrong, I love a good roller-coaster), rather everyone has a different experience and has their own contribution. I notice that a lot in the video-games I tend to play most. Take the Hitman series, for example, one of my all-time favorites. Sure, every player gets the same exact mission. "Go to this place and assassinate these targets," but Hitman is fun for me in that my contribution to the game makes a huge difference. Kill these targets, but in what way? Do I take it in a sneaky, subtle approach and try to use a carefully-placed poison in their food? Do I play the manipulator and orchestrate events to get my results? Do I do it down and dirty and sabotage some piece of heavy equipment? Hell, maybe I'm feeling lazy and I just John Wick my way through the mission, guns blazing. My contribution shapes the game experience, and that's something I enjoy thoroughly. I can't stand games where the experience is like an amusement-park ride, where you're stuck on the rails of one particular experience and that's that. Take for example the Call of Duty franchise. Not counting the multi-player aspect, the single-player campaign for every recent game in the series play out exactly the same for everyone. Start a mission, have some dialogue, go to a carefully-designed shooting gallery and shoot some dudes, then move on to the next pre-determined set piece and do it over and over again until the mission is done. Any time spent not doing the shooty parts is spent going through carefully choreographed events that, again, are the same for everyone. "Oh no, a big rock is falling on you! Mash X to push it away!" Boring. In City of Heroes, the contribution comes from both the diversity of the archetype system and the versatility of making different builds. In an online setting, I love feeling like I'm contributing something to the team. I don't have to be the center of attention or the cornerstone of a team, but rather I just like to have the feeling of "if I wasn't around, the team would be slightly worse off, so I'm contributing!" If my Defender casts a resurrect on a fallen ally, I'm contributing, even if only in a minor sense. It's why I tend to complain a lot about the current implentation of the Incarnate system and how it lets some players become literal gods who can steamroll everything. I hardly join teams post-level 40 because I don't like just following along and watching as the one suped-up Blaster or Brute just nukes every mob into oblivion. I want to feel like I'm bringing something to the table, no matter how small. The second aspect is reward, and that's something a lot of video-games seem to get either terribly wrong or perfectly correct, with no in-betweens. Rewards need to be balance in a way that your effort feels suitable to the reward given. In essence, doing a small thing gets you a small reward, doing a big thing gets you a big reward. It's another reason I loved City of Heroes over other MMO's because CoH lacked that intense grind that every other MMO seems to include by obligation. I don't have to farm the same task force 30 times to get a shot at that one rare piece of loot that I really want; instead, I can do a few task forces, all different from each other, get merits, and spend those on the things I want. I have fun when I feel like I did a thing, and I got something cool and enjoyable out of it, but also where I feel the time and effort spent obtaining said thing was worth it. If I grind for 100 hours and all you give me is a reskinned weapon? Sorry, that's not gonna cut it. It reminds me of Dark Souls 2 and the two absolutely pathetic items, "Illusory Ring of the Exalted" and "Illusory Ring of the Conquerer," obtained by beating the game without resting at a single bonfire and beating the game without dying once, respectively. Anybody who has played Dark Souls should know how monumentally difficult this challenge is (especially in DS2 as that game loves to fuck with you and just kill you for no reason), so you think, those rings must be pretty cool, huh? Nope. First ring makes your right-handed weapon invisible, and the second ring makes your left-handed weapon invisible. I guess that's cool if you're into PvP, but even then, the advantage obtained is minimal at best. Those two concepts are what determine fun for me in a video-game. Is the game taking my contribution into account, and am I being rewarded adequately for my effort? City of Heroes accomplishes both of these in a satisfactory manner, and most of the other games I play do as well. That's my definition of fun, at least as far as video-games are concerned.

I'm pretty sure the "bad moral compass" comment was in regards to the arc itself. It was classified as "heroic" and the description of the story was something along the lines of "discover what it means to be a hero..." and I could definitely see what they were attempting to do, but it was poorly executed. You walk into an empty building, click some boxes (all of which had no text by the way so you don't even know why you're clicking them.) Then suddenly this kid NPC appears, says something about saving him, and then you fight yourself (???) and boom, the mission is over. That's apparently what it means to be a hero. I said in my comment to him that it didn't make sense because there was no explanation, and somehow he took that to mean I didn't understand heroism and my moral compass was broken. You didn't have to upvote my arcs. I appreciate it, but I'm not here for validation. I'm mainly here giving context to a situation and asking if this is a reportable offense or if anything can be done, since it was clearly someone revenge-voting my stories because they were upset with me.

You have literally described a review. Regardless, anybody's opinion on how exactly the system ought to be used is irrelevant to this discussion. I explained what happened for context. The point is that a player, in "revenge" for me saying unflattering things in private about their story, decided to abuse the system and 1-star all of my arcs without actually playing or even reading them. It makes no difference if I should or should not have played their arc and offered a comment (which itself is a ridiculous argument to make anyway), what matters is the response. One would also be correct in saying that. Regardless of your actual intentions for the arc, you're posting it on a public system, one which is accessible to everyone playing the game. Anybody can view and play your arc, and once again, the system itself asks you at the end to rate and comment on it. I am literally using the system exactly as it was designed. If you post an arc up in the Mission Architect system, whether you like it or not, someone is going to play it. You are implicitly asking for people to rate and comment on it by submitting it to the public. You are giving people permission to do so by using the system. If you aren't prepared for people to critique your submission... don't submit.

My opinion apparently did matter, enough for them to revenge-rate all of my stories because they were upset. You're making several assumptions here yourself. If they really were "just f-ing around with the interface" then my feedback shouldn't have mattered at all to them. "It's just a test arc, of course it's going to be bad." Based on their reaction, they obviously were looking for feedback. "You srsly look for TYPOS? what is wrong with you? and if it does not make sense you.. maybe you are just having completly broken moral compass." Not sure how you can look at this response and assume they had no clue what they were doing, or that they were just testing the system.

You post a story on a public forum, a public forum that specifically includes a review system for the express purpose of letting players offer feedback. Furthermore they had their arc tagged as "looking for feedback," so, yes, I believe they were asking for critique. Maybe not me specifically, but in general. If you don't want people to criticize your work, you shouldn't be putting it up on a public system and tagging it as "looking for feedback." You cannot seriously fault me for using the system as it was intended. You put arcs up for the public to view. It asks every player who plays the mission to offer feedback and a rating. I did just that. If you didn't want people to critique it, then you either A) shouldn't post it at all, or B) put in the description that it's just for your own personal use. Neither of those happened. "Looking for feedback." I gave them feedback. No, I do not expect them to be grateful for it. I do expect them to be more mature about handling criticism. Again, if you didn't want people to play it, you shouldn't post it, or you should make it clear it's just for you/your friend(s).

Much as I would like to, it would appear they took it down shortly after these messages, as I can no longer find it, even under the "completed" section of the search bar. Also, I can now confirm that they went through all of my arcs and rated them all 1 star. It's honestly hilarious. Shame nothing can be done about it, though. I suppose there's always the option of unpublishing then republishing, but then you'd wipe all of your ratings. Oh well.

So I apologize if this is improper to post, but I just have to share this because it really just rubbed me the wrong way. I try to go into AE and review actual, non-farm missions. I appreciate AE for what it was intended to be, and I like to go in there and check things out when I'm bored of the regular content I've played a thousand times. Now, what I like to do is find missions that haven't been played or rated yet, so I can give some feedback. I'm not going to name names or list arc IDs, but I found one arc that was... pretty bad. Loads of typos, one mission only, clues with no text, and exactly one whole enemy on the map. Needless to say, it was poorly done. I gave it a rating and gave it a critique. I don't act rude in my reviews, I try to offer constructive criticism, so just know this isn't a result of me being rude to this person. Cut to few hours later. I get a tell to my global. It's from the author of said arc. Here's how the conversation went. Names withheld to protect the guilty. Now you can see that last message they sent was a "review" of an arc I wrote. I know for a fact that they didn't actually play it, because that "review" came no more than two minutes after their first message. This was clearly someone throwing a tantrum and giving a bad review in retaliation for my own. Has this ever happened to anybody else? Can anything be done about it? I know ratings and stuff aren't really important, but it's a bit frustrating to have someone throw a temper tantrum and review-bomb your own stories just because you gave them an unfavorable review.

So this is how the character creation process, and by extension, the costume creation goes for me. The first step for me is saying "this character concept sounds cool." All my characters have a backstory, every last one, so the most important thing for all my characters and their costumes is their concept. Once I've got a concept in mind, I'll go for whatever powers sound most appropriate/fun for said concept. Sometimes I pick the powers to go with a concept, and sometimes a concept to go with powers. After that is costume creation. This is obviously the most fun part, as it likely is for a lot of folks. Since I've been playing this game for so long, I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of costume pieces are available, so when I've got a concept, I almost always have some idea of what they're going to look like, and then it's just a matter of making what I imagined with the costume creator. I'll spend quite a bit of time here fine-tuning stuff until I feel it's just right, and then, I'm done! I can never just play around in the costume creator without a character in mind. It just doesn't work that way for me. Every character I make has a story, an origin, a personality, and their choice of dress always reflects that. Furthermore, every time I make a new character and costume, I absolutely must see the costume in action. I can't just make a costume and let it sit there; I have to actually get in the game and see how it looks when running, jumping, attacking, etc... I don't have a whole lot of costumes saved locally. The few that I do have are for characters whose costumes I liked but their powers/concept just didn't mesh well with me. In some of those cases where I really like the costume, I'll save it locally and try to rework it into a new character concept.

Obviously I'd just get in my car where I'm 100% safe. I can just drive in circles all day, and there are literally no gas stations anywhere in the city, so no need for gas. Even a Stone Armor tank in granite armor sitting in the middle of the road couldn't stop me!

I think I might have hit them a little too hard...

I'm glad someone finally brought this up. I'd been meaning to, but I figured nobody really cared about a 17 year old legacy arc from when the game first launched. My two biggest issues with it are, firstly, what you brought up: Janet Kellum provides absolutely no evidence whatsoever for her bold accusation that Julianne murdered Clarissa. Secondly, you're on a missing person's case, looking for some girl who disappeared ten years ago, and then when Night Fox mentions "I think she died" Janet just magically finds a body and gets it shipped to the US. I thought this girl was supposed to be missing? Yeah, I get that we're supposed to believe she faked her death and stole Clarissa's identity, but even with that being the case, how come nobody thought to inform her family? You find a body, you apparently know enough about it to guess that it's Julianne Thompson, but nobody thought to pass the news along to anybody??? Crey isn't necessarily a "big business is evil" mentality as much as they're this game's version of LexCorp. Countess Crey is similar to Lex Luthor in a lot of ways. The smart, talented, but also evil businesswoman who uses her public persona of philanthropy to hide her evil intentions. All of the contacts and missions that deal with Crey show that, no matter what kind of evil stuff they get caught doing, they always have some kind of convenient excuse or plausible deniability to prevent charges from sticking. It's a fine trope to use, and I'd really like to enjoy Janet Kellum's arc where you can finally stick it to Crey and expose them. But, as you've accurately described, the entire arc is one hot mess. It really would be nice if the arc was handed to someone more experienced with writing murder mystery/conspiracy stories, since that's clearly what they were going for. But all of it just makes no sense, and flies directly in the face of not only heroism, but logic itself.

It also leads to problems if you announce one thing and then it turns out you can't do it anymore. As the saying goes, no news is good news.

As far as I can tell, all of the following are used to determine how much EXP a mob gives: The rank of the mob The level of the mob relative to yours How many players are on your team The exact type of mob that it is That last one is where things get confusing and where you'd have to really dig into the game to find out, because certain mobs have different modifiers based on their type. A Tsoo minion at even con to you doesn't give the same EXP as an equal-level Freakshow minion. I do not envy the person who decides to start collecting data on that.

I personally just wish activating the challenge settings on TF's gave you bonus merits. "Hey, you did the Imperious Task Force with 0 deaths, enemies buffed and no inspirations? Have some bonus merits for your effort!" I think that might go a long way towards making people use the existing difficulty settings and making the game harder for those who want to. Anyways, back on topic, another thing I miss from live is PvP. Yeah, I know that's technically not a "live vs homecoming" thing, as PvP really died with Issue 13, but I remember being on live pre-Issue 13 and actually feeling a small threat from being in a PvP zone. It felt kind of fun, in a way, knowing someone could swoop in and take my meteor pieces. Now PvP is a barren wasteland that virtually nobody visits.

To be honest, I kind of miss having to unlock costume parts and slots like capes, auras, etc... I still refuse to utilize those costume pieces and slots until I've done the required missions at the appropriate level. Back on live, it always made me really happy to get to level 20 and go talk to Serge for a new costume, then go to City Hall for my cape. Sure, I can pretend I'm still unlocking it, but it's not really the same feeling, I guess.

This can also be abused to fight enemies at levels greater than +4 for Task Forces that work this way. I was running with a team doing the Manticore TF. The TF is for level 30-35, but will always spawn enemies at level 35. Our team leader was only 31, and forgot that his difficulty setting was at +2, so we ended up having a team of players exemplared down to level 31 fighting against level 37 Crey. It was actually really fun, if not a bit difficult, and I'm actually interested in running more of the sub-50 task forces like this and seeing if it's doable.

This. If you're a Vigilante or a Rogue, the ship can take you to the Rogue Isles in addition to Striga/Talos/IP.

Whenever I run the Manticore TF and we get to the timed mission, Security Chief Manning shouts out: "You are banned from this facility!" and, without fail, I always respond: "Oh, darn guys. Guess we have to leave, he said we were banned. Good attempt, team!" ... then we promptly kick Manning's ass and continue. 😛 And, during the Imperious TF, one of the generals says: "The rumors are true, Imperious can no longer fight his own battles!" to which I respond along the lines of "You're teaming up with evil space aliens and time-traveling neo-Nazis and you're calling us out for coming to help???"

I believe what the OP is referring to is the message that pops up in the chat box. Currently, whenever you get a vet level, it always says: "Your combat improves to level 50! See a trainer to further your abilities." I dunno if that would be possible to display veteran levels, but it'd be nice. So upvote from me. Would be a nice QoL feature.

If the mission were updated so that the time between spawns wasn't so long, it'd probably be fun. As it stands now, though, they spawn too far away and so infrequently that more than half of your mission time is spent standing there doing nothing. But wait, "fight other mobs in-between spawns" I hear you say! Well, that really depends on the character I'm playing on. Other stupid thing is the spawns don't announce their presence, or really make any indication at all that they've spawned, so running around fighting the other mobs, if you're not on a high damage character, risks them getting in the door and failing. That's just my thought process on it. If you like it, go nuts. That's why the auto-complete function exists. If you like it, you can play it. If you don't? Skip!

There's only a small handful of missions that I label as "must skip." Most of the time, I only auto-complete missions when they are bugged, like having a mob get stuck in the wall. My list is as follows: Stop 30 Fir Bolg entering door - Skipper LeGrange Everyone skips this one, and for good reason. It's one of the most boring missions in the game. I usually don't mind tedium with fighting a bunch of bad guys, but the time between each wave spawn is so damn long and you end up sitting in this mission for close to twenty minutes. Stop takeover of Salamanca - Buck Salinger Another one everybody skips for the same reason as the last. You literally stand there for fifteen minutes, waiting for spawns to come, and there's no way to speed up the clock. I don't usually mind tedium in this game, but when I'm forced to stand in one spot and wait patiently for infrequent spawns to show up, I get rather annoyed. Kidnap Workmen - Marshal Brass I hate this map. I dislike outdoor maps in general, but I hate this one in particular, because enemies can spawn everywhere, not just on the ground. On the ground, on the rooftops, on the boxes, behind the boxes, outside the walls, on the walkways... and you have to try and find three hostages and then lead them back in order to finish. Trying to find these hostages is a nightmare, because as mentioned before, they can spawn literally anywhere, and you have to scour all three dimensions of this map in order to do it. Get Wormy out of warehouse - Lorenz Ansaldo I consider this mission bugged, because Wormy has a unique walking animation that causes him to stop walking and pause every few steps, and he will not start walking again until a couple of seconds pass. Also you're being ambushed by Longbow the entire time. So, you've got a hostage who has to stop to take a breather every few feet, he follows you very slowly, if you get too far he stops and waits for you to go get him again, and you're being harassed by enemies the entire time. Fuck you, Wormy, I'm leaving you to get arrested by Longbow. There's probably a few more like that, but those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. I'll probably post more when I am reminded of them. 😛

I want to preface this by saying I'm not nearly as good at design as some folks in here. I'm very "plain Jane" with a lot of costumes, sticking to similar costume "sets" and color schemes, but I went a bit farther this time and I'm really happy with how it came out. Meet Low Point, my Ice/Icy Dominator. I'm particularly happy with this one because I didn't stick to any one set like I usually do, and found a bunch of good pieces that I mixed and matched into a good look for him. He's an unstable, nihilistic youth who developed super powers from a mutation, and is out to make the world just as cold and frozen as his heart is.

800,000,000. That's my guess. 😛

My Night Widow I had to respec at least 7 times to make it work, but I finally got it right now. Every other character? Maybe once, if even. Truthfully I don't even plan out my builds, I just figure it out as I go along, and that one respec is usually in the later game when I realize which powers work and which don't. Most of the time, as I'm leveling up, I get a feel for what my character is good at, what they're not good at, and make my power/slot choices based on that. I'm no power-gamer by any stretch of the imagination, so admittedly, it doesn't take much to make me happy. I'm not out to min/max my characters, I'm out to have fun and do silly stuff.