ZemX

There are reasons, which means the rules are not arbitrary. That word does not mean "rules I don't agree with". Looked easy enough to me if there were sixteen plus people in the league vs. one entitled jackwad who couldn't read and didn't have the maturity to deal with not getting exactly what he wanted when he wanted it.

You should go Rogue for a bit and Ouro the Dean MacArthur / Leonard arcs. Then you can choose to face eight of your clones at once and earn the "Army of Me" badge. 😈 Course, you have inspirations and they don't which is what saved me. Couple purples and my Ninjitsu is soft-capped. They still tried burying me in a pile of Caltrops, though.

No Goldside? Slacker!

Confirmed by the way. If you choose to kill Harris, you can still complete Webber via Ouro without any trouble. Just did so.

Neat! These clone arcs are really some of the best in the game: And yes, there's one extra response you get when you first talk to Jenni Adair:

Awww, mannnnn. Now I feel bad! I'm going to go cry into my piles of money from the bank job, now!

Oops! Though this time I did FireWire. Is this also a problem if you have to Ouro Doc Webber?

Oooo... I JUST did Leonard's arc and am level 28. I may just have to take a short Vigilante Vacation for this. 😈 Speaking of clones... a spoiler question for Leonard's arc for those who have done it:

Okay you convinced me. I re-rolled Chrome Ninja and worked my way back up doing all arcs. You were not kidding about Sharkhead. The combination of that many arcs and the lowish level makes it a total slog. But I am back at level 28 after having done most of Sharkhead. I still need to finish Ross and then do Wade and Tarixus. Might do Buzzsaw but could also save for later. Nice thing about being a Stalker is blowing through missions in stealth mode (when they aren't defeat-alls or kidnappings anyway). I did stop over in Atlas to run four DFBs and that helped a lot, especially on the recovery buff. I was also a little more careful on my attacks. Took one fewer attack and slotted the rest better. Slowed me down a little but stayed within the endurance budget without having to add slots to Health/Stamina. Around 22ish, I started slotting sets. ATOs and attack sets at least. Decided not to bother with DiBs. I did mess up a little bit along the way. Didn't pay close enough attention to Dr. Graves. Saw he was 5-19 but didn't check that his three story arcs each had different level ranges. So I missed that entirely and will have to Ouro it. Also missed one of Billy Heck's arcs. But the shorter one. Other than that. I think I got everything so far. Including unlockables. Ghost Pirates weren't too bad. Just took a few nights in a row while doing other content to go hunt them around the fort. And some folks were hitting Scrapyarder on the regular over the weekend, so "Strikebuster" was no problem. Just finished Leonard again last night. Love that arc. "Army of Me" badge! And yes, I am trying to keep an eye on the level ranges and stop at the upper end of the set of arcs I need to finish. I missed Billy Heck's second arc because I turned on XP too soon thinking I could still finish his arc. Worked, but it locked me out of his second arc. So not doing that again.

In my case the problem is the gameplay at low levels just isn't fun for me. I have few powers, poorly slotted, and (usually) endurance issues. So I'll go in with the intent of stopping XP and playing all the arcs and then eventually just run out of patience after one too many kill-all slogs. And that's with all SOs, a few of the good end procs, amplifiers at level 1, P2W goodies. It just sort of becomes a chore to actually get through the missions in the mid-teens. Starts to get better around 20. Is fine by 30. I will likely have no problem completing all contacts from about level 30 on because the character has started to become fun enough to play it isn't detracting from enjoying the stories.

You have more patience than I do. I started out with the intent of doing something similar for at least the redside contacts but didn't even make it through Port Oakes without saying... "Okay, I am sick of being on NoXP. I will skip... that contact chain over there." Did the same in Sharkhead and Nerva. Skipped all of First Ward/Night Ward because I've done them all before. But if you need another Rogue for anything, shoot Chrome Ninja a tell (or @ZemX). Chrome is currently level 28 and a Staff/Ninjitsu Stalker on Excelsior.

Are you serious? Easily half the Posi 1s I've ever run, somebody aggroes the doors to City Hall ambush before the team is ready for it. The worst of these, the whole team ended up being spawn camped at the zone entrance on the way back from the hospital. And that's just one example. Veteran or not, some people just don't bother to be careful when they play. Maybe they don't think it's fun. Maybe they are high when they play. I don't know. And by the way... it's not entirely a complaint either. It's what makes PuGs interesting. The other people on the team often don't do things the way you'd do them or even in a way you might consider "optimal". I have certainly been on PuGs that ran like clockwork too. Not saying that doesn't happen.

Really? I find those other people perfectly capable of creating non-optimized aggro without the need for pets. They're called "Pick Up Groups" 🤪

In retrospect though, not very surprising. I'm seeing the same thing on my Rad/Rad defender who uses Rad Infection vs. the Kat/Nin scrapper relying on defense toggles. The scrap is doing better now he has Divine Avalanche to really amp up his melee defense but he's also in Praetoria where entire maps of all-ranged clockwork are unimpressed by near soft-capped melee defense. The rad/rad has always taken longer to finish each fight but between RI and Radiant Aura, often finishes that fight near full health. The only thing I've run into that's alarmingly dropped her health is Hellion Damned's and their fire blasts. And for them, it's usually enough to pop a small purple and lean a little harder on the self heal. Drains more end but I can stay out of the danger zone and finish the fight. Rad Infection, if I can manage to get and keep everyone else inside of it, might as well be a 31.25% def(ALL) toggle that I got at level 1. Scrapper can't touch that.

Okay yeah, I'll admit I find most pets annoying. And I don't think MM fans need to react to that as some kind of insult or other. I like what I like and I don't like what I don't like. I don't get in anyone's face about it in game. MMs for me are in the category of audio/visual noise. There's just too much of them there. Certain overbearing non-MM powersets also tick me off in the same way. I love the powers... but hate the VFX. Like Electrical Affinity. I LOVE what it does. I hate that it looks like I'm constantly being electrocuted by a teammate with the attendant and constant white-noise of "bzzzzzzzt...." going off every two seconds. Stormies... yeah, you are godly and I, at the same time, hate hurricanes and lightning storms. I don't want to turn off all visual affects to alleviate that either. And like I said, I don't act like a jerk about it in game. I grit my teeth and deal with it. But I usually excuse myself sooner than I normally would on a team with multiple MMs or overbearing VFX.

There is this great quote from Dafoe that I remember seeing in some interview he did a long time ago but can never manage to turn it up in a search these days. Interviewer asked him about his long career of playing bad guys and some good guys and the question was something like "Which do you prefer playing? Good guys or bad guys?" His answer, probably paraphrasing here: "Good guys. Bad guys. It doesn't matter. Everyone thinks they're righteous." Whenever I do play a villain in this game, I always think of this quote and try to imagine why they think it's okay to do the things they do, even if it's something I wouldn't in reality agree with. Why do they think they are righteous? I do get a chuckle out of the idea that playing redside in this game could possibly have an effect on one's behavior, though, or say anything at all about their actual real-world character. I think what research HAS shown, that I've heard of at least, is that it is actually competitive games (whether video games or real world sports), rather than good vs. evil or even violence in games, that have a much greater effect on aggression and mood. You will find far more toxicity in online competitive multiplayer games than you ever will on anything related to City of Heroes, which is rarely played in a direct player-vs-player competitive fashion.

It doesn't make sense because it is literally made up nonsense by you. EVERY contact in the Rogue Isles (including all three starting contacts in Mercy) explains what's in it for you when they ask you to run a mission. I mean you actually rob banks if you play redside and here you are saying you don't get paid as a villain? Are you really being serious with that one? I just ran a delightful little arc where I seized a cloning facility and then put it to work making a clone army of myself. Now, you could say that didn't totally work out in the end but hey... that's sort of the life of a villain too in the comics ain't it? If any of our diabolical schemes actually ever did work well enough to take over the world, there'd be nothing left for us to do, now would there? It does if you have misapplied that research. If your assumptions are "horsecrap", then so are your conclusions no matter what the research says. And your assumption that roleplaying is a large motivator for general attitudes in this game is entirely unsupported by any evidence. The vast majority of teams you see advertised in this game (even on the unofficial roleplaying server) have nothing to do with roleplaying. Thus the topic of this thread, which has to do with difficulty finding teams redside, has nothing (or at least very little) to do with roleplaying.

Not to you, you mean. I thought it was hilarious.

Which is why I wouldn't bother with stealth stacking even if it DID work on Rikti Drones. It's not worth the extra power slot to deal with something that's that rare and not really a big inconvenience anyway.

Would you spend one merit on an EndMod SO? 😈

The only potentially weird thing I do is take Provoke on my Stalkers (if I can fit it). And it's actually kind of practical since it helps keep foes from running away from me and also is useful on teams keeping stuff off of others if there is no or not enough tanking/control on the team already. But it seems thematically weird because it's sort of the opposite of sneaky, I guess. I skip Placate and I take Provoke. 🤪

I tend to agree. I only got my Iron Challenger up to about 21 or so but he had millions on hand from selling converters. Always enough for SOs at the least and even a few IOs by then. On the other hand, doing @Ukase's "Drop Challenge" is brutal. It's clear you can't get enough enhancements just using drops. At least not in the first 20 or so levels probably. Not without stopping XP strictly to farm dropped enhancements. The problem is most of what you get is either not for your origin or it's not a type that's useful to that particular character (like a hold enhancement on someone with no hold powers yet) . And some types seem almost never to drop too, like EndMod enhancements. I think if you go long enough to get enough IO recipe drops (and the salvage and inf to craft them) it eventually solves that problem but it's a slog definitely. So yeah I would think allowing buying enhancements at vendors and use of the upgrade button on the enhancement window is a good idea. Unlike Ukase's challenge, I would allow use of the Merit Vendor. Just no AH at all. If you earned the merits you can use them and anything you can get from them at the Merit Vendor. You just can't sell it on the AH. So no converters for cash or rolling IOs into high demand ones for making money.

No, I get the part about inheritance. What I mean is... when you referred to the Iron Challenge rules you said "drops only" which can be interpreted to mean you can't buy things at vendors or on the AH. i.e. You can only use drops from defeated enemies. The only use for influence would be crafting dropped IO recipes using dropped salvage. In other words: Are you thinking about restricting vendor or auction house usage? What about the merit vendor?

Sounds cool but can you clarify "drops only"? @Chainz's rules basically just amounted to "self funded". You weren't limited to just using dropped enhancements. You could buy at vendors or, if you wanted to, sell converters or converted IOs on the market for cash.

You assume incorrectly. Scrappers are quite common on teams.