MHertz

I wasn't taking a position on whether they should, only how I interpreted the corporate-speak

Personally, I read this as "we do not have a plan to," rather than "we plan to never." The latter would be assurance that it would not be considered at any time, now or ever. The former just says they're not contemplating it now. Not necessarily. Some people (like me) use it for RP purposes. You need an extra character to come in for a scene, but you need your main there too? You can create a character on a second account/instance. Sure, you could argue that earning XP that way is a bit of an exploit — but it depends how you're doing it. If you've got 7 AFK toons on a couple friends' multiboxed accounts just sitting around at the Halloween Murder Hotel, yeah, that's an exploit, because one is doing all the work and 7 are just soaking up server space and XP. Or you could actually be multi-boxing and actively clicking all the powers for each of your toons, which frankly is more like a handicap than an exploit.

From the CoC page: "Finally, Game Masters may request that you stop multiboxing during events such as the Halloween and Winter events to reduce server load or decongest populated areas." Can this be clarified? Does this mean there is no multiboxing at all during the months of October and December, while those events are running? Or is it more of a "do not participate in these events while multiboxing" kind of thing? Or a "stay out of heavily populated zones" thing? I multibox, but I'm usually in my SG base or Pocket D, not doing XP events.

You guess correctly; that was what prompted me to make this post. Someone created a character along a similar style and naming convention, with a costume inspired from the clones’ collective look, and was meant to be the bad/evil/broken version. I don’t have a problem with someone creating said character, even if the person didn’t ask, even if the person knew me but was deliberately hiding it from me. (Both true in this case.) I have no control over what characters people play or what they’re called, and I can’t be bothered to worry about it. It’s a bit flattering that they would want to be part of the group, and I can appreciate that some people want to join in on something unique or popular or thought-provoking or infamous. (I flatter myself that the clones I made are at least one of these.) I encourage people to do so, when I find interested people that I think have the chops and the personal chemistry for it. What particularly annoyed me was when the player with the bad/broken version started interacting with my friends and pretending to be part of the same lore without telling me. That’s just outright lying to people on purpose in order to cause (or having the effect of causing) confusion. Worse, they got the lore wrong. Luckily, one person they chose knew me on Discord and sent a message to the effect of “I don’t know if you know this but…” so I was able to notify other players and SGs that this was not authorized. The player perpetrating the copy claims that he told my friend up front that they weren’t authorized. The friend verified this. However, I have no idea if that’s the only time this bad/twisted version was set free to interact with others. I doubt the perpetrator would tell the truth. That is because this behavior was in line with that player’s MO. Twice before they had entered my base (a park where Nature is allowed to take its course) with storylines where they would mess up something. Once was “I’m a city official and this location must be registered with the city” and the other was “I cause mutations in plants wherever I go, deal with it!” Both times the player was told to run these ideas past me first, and that I’m not going to give latitude for them to break my stories or my RP space just because the player likes to throw chaos bombs. Of course the player pouted that I wouldn’t just let them run rampant in my base with storylines designed to break things, even deliberately misunderstanding what the problem was, like I was trying to control who their characters can be. No, I’m not; I’m saying “if this is who your character is, they’re not welcome here.” That was the only the thing that was within my power. I said “I won’t stop you from playing your character. You have the nugget of a good idea, why wouldn’t you make it your own? Still, playing that character here will never be welcome, and if you come back here to break things again I will contact a GM.” And that, boys and girls and everyone who identifies as both or neither or in between, is why I didn’t want to make this thread about someone who copied my character — because it wasn’t the copying that was the problem.

If it were just a similar costume, along a very simple theme, I wouldn’t give a fig about it, personally. People can use the same designs. The first few months on Live had a gaggle of female toons in the jagged metallic bodysuit thing, only varying in color and skin tone. It happens. The more distinct and unique your choices and colors are — you didn’t just pick “robot” or “zombie” from the costume drop-down menu and went with the defaults, and not copying some specific thing like a naval uniform or a business suit — the harder it is to justify as creative overlap, and the more I would give it some side-eye looks.

As far as I understand, COH owns the costume designs, but I don’t recall their ever saying they own the writing in the bios or the text that players type in RP. As far as what could be damaged, it’s possible for an impostor to damage friendships, trust, and a SG’s reputation. I think players are entitled to own those. There’s definitely room for being flattered. I can totally see that. I think it depends on the approach, but sure. That’s also a good way to look at it. I haven’t wanted to make this about me, because a) I’ve already spoken to the person in question and I don’t need advice; and b) the situation I faced is more about the way the player chose to go about it, rather than the copying in and of itself. I wanted to see how people felt about just the imitation part, not my specific circumstances.

I know exactly how I feel about it, and what I plan to do. I’m curious what other people think, because it’s an interesting area to discuss.

Someone on my shard has, I am told, created a character whose look draws 95% from mine, has a similar name that could be confused for mine; and they are RPing as if they are part of the lore behind mine, with at least one person that I also RP with. And I don’t just have one character like this; it’s the basic uniform for a SG full of alts along the same lines. I don’t want to get into specifics about who, which character, which shard, or to what degree they are similar. It isn’t about this particular case, and I’m not asking in order to know how to deal with this one individual. I want to know: what would you do? Would you be flattered and pleased that your character was noticed? Would you be annoyed that they didn’t ask permission? Or would you worry that other players will mistake them for an affiliated and authorized character who could damage your lore or your reputation?

Thanks! I read through the details of that arc, and there weren't any specifics on the origin of the Hamidon. The way the arc is phrased, it does imply that it happened recently, as the victim of the arc seems surprised to discover that Hamidon has become a monster, but since the Hive exists, I can't take that at face value.

I don’t have a problem with minimizing the effect of the RoP. If you can’t thereafter tell when your mez resistance drops, that’s on you. Generally, powers have visible effects because that is feedback to the user. If you want to forego the feedback, I don’t want to see threads like “I can’t tell when RoP runs out, can I make it have XYZ effect?” You asked for minimal FX, so live with it. As for alternate animations, in an ideal world, you’d be able to select from 5 different animations based on origin. Magic = casting, Tech = device, Natural = fist blasting, etc. But that’s a lot of customization and not enough animations to go around — not to mention the nightmare of balancing the activation times of multiple animations of different lengths for every power. And all your “magic” powers would look similar and stale. In the land of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the real pie-in-the-sky dream game, you’d get to customize the animation effect also. Fire would always do DOT, but you could make it look like ice, radiation, psionics, or whatever. Again — huge investment of time and resources for a purely cosmetic thing.

I am trying to put together a timeline of events for my character(s), and I'm trying to determine how and when Woodvale fell and became Eden. This is directly tied to the Devouring Earth, which are tied to Hamidon; but there is not any information on the various wiki articles about when all this went down. My best guess: Hamidon was a scientist, which probably put his pre-transformation age between 30 to 40. Getting advanced degrees takes time. City of Heroes came out in 2004, and it is now 2024 ... presumably? Hamidon in blob form probably existed for some time prior to 2004, because there's War Walls built around the Hive and Woodvale. Call it ... five years for construction of the walls, and maybe 5 years of battling the Devouring Earth as Woodvale turned into Eden. Hamidon the Human would require some time to make his discovery. Assuming he had the breakthrough, created the DE, and became a blob all in the same year, I will put this duration as 0 for now, assuming the best-case scenario for a brilliant but mad breakthrough. Crey Industries has a large presence in Woodvale, in the Utopia Complex; Crey was founded (by lore) in 1989. This would put the earliest year for the first appearance of Blob Hamidon at about 1994. This roughly coincides with the founding of Crey, assuming 5 years for Crey Biotech to get big enough to warrant a large complex in Woodvale. This suggests that Hamidon the Human was born roughly between 1954 and 1964ish. In human terms he would between 60 and 70 today. The downfall of Woodvale thus began in 1994 and ended in 1999, making the devastation about 30 years old. It could've been later than this, but likely not much earlier, given the presence of Crey in Woodvale; to make it later, we would have to assume that Crey built their complex after Woodvale began to fall. What do you think? Is there any lore that I missed that gives a rough date?

How can you reliably and safely hold aggro beyond the limits the game was balanced for? Well, I don’t think you can, nor do I think you should. If you’re taking on 3 or 4 groups simultaneously and you’re never in any danger, then I’m tempted to ask “then what would be a threat?” How do you balance a giant monster or an archvillain around the idea that a) it’s dangerous and b) a single character can take on 50+ mobs at once? That’s just a recipe for making Tankers required for any serious content, and that’s not a design philosophy this game goes for. The other question is this: What is the rest of your team doing while you’re holding aggro on 50 enemies? If you’ve got Defenders and Controllers and Corruptors on your team, they’re also helping protect the squishies. If you have Dominators or Corruptors or Blasters, they’re dealing big damage so holding aggro isn’t so important. If you’ve got Brutes or Scrappers or Masterminds, they’re helping. And if you’ve got another Tanker, why do you need to do it all yourself? I’m confused. I guess it comes down to the feeling you get when you take on 50 at once. You feel powerful. I get it. It’s a mighty role when you can protect your entire team (of slackers and layabouts who contribute nothing) while you stand fast against an enemy horde all by your lonesome, standing in place and swinging your fists and never running out of enemies. It feels less powerful to have teammates that contribute so much that you have to run around and pick off stragglers one by one. (This happens because your teammates are good at their jobs too.) You presumably want all the focus on you, to maximize everyone’s AOEs and to make big numbers appear around you. But that’s super hard to balance around.

"Patience, yeah, yeah. How long will that take?" —Ed Gruberman

How about: Only use trains, ferries and zone gates for zone travel Must train only in Peregrine Island That won’t add a tremendous amount of difficulty once you reach your first travel power, but it would almost certainly require that you take one; that way you can’t use that power choice for something else.

Brute: easiest to play, most expensive to equip, least likely to learn about the game’s enemies. Brutes have good survivability, and with all of their status protection and built-in damage bonuses, they can fly through content. The flip side of that is that Defense and Resist enhancements tend to be among the most expensive (Damage and Healing are tops), and with your lovely status protection shielding you, you won’t even notice that certain enemies have stuns, holds, confuses or immobilizes until the late game bad guys roll around. Sentinels: on par with Brutes from an expense and learning standpoint, and not as powerful. The least expensive to equip are probably Controllers, but they aren’t easy to solo. However, as with playing any squishy type (Blaster, Defender, Corruptor, Dominator) you do learn a lot about what the enemies can do. Any archetype can make money on the auction house if you do a small amount of research.