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.

Every archetype plays a little differently and you have to get used to its limitations. I'd say you're going about it the right way — by trying them. It's too easy in this game to hop on a team, zoom past 10 levels, and the realize you have no idea to play the archetype or the power set you've chosen against the enemies you're now facing. Being on a team, even a poorly slapped-together one, doesn't teach you much about solo tactics, and being on a good team will cover up a lot of your mistakes. First: different archetypes have different target priorities. As a Tanker you can afford to charge at the boss and let the minions fall by the wayside due to your AOEs. Your high durability and status protection means you're in no danger from the little guys while you whittle down the big guy. Switching from Tanker to anything else, you might say, "Gosh, I didn't know those guys had Stun. Huh. Who knew?" You never felt it. As a Brute, you have similar durability, but you're on this non-stop crusade of smashing everything in your path without rest, to make best use of Fury. Not all archetypes play like those, and wearing your Brute hat on a Blaster will get you crushed. As a Blaster, you might want to cut down the number of minions early, from a safe distance, before taking on the boss. Or maybe you want to focus on a lieutenant with mez powers (like in the Lost) or a summoner (as in the Banished Pantheon) or AOE knockdown (Ruin Mages in the COT), because you can't fight those as easily. You'll also learn which bad guys need 3 hits, and which you can eliminate in 2 or 1, and which ones you want to keep out of melee range. You'll learn when to switch targets. ("Let's see, I'll immobilize that guy, move over here, blast this guy, oops this one's getting too close but I have some punches ready to go. Now back to the immobilized one...") As a Scrapper (as with a Brute) your defenses mature later, but you get critical hits, so you have to figure out the best way to make use of them. Both power sets have some soft control powers in a few things, like -Def or -ToHit or Slow, so figure out where to apply those. You just have to think more, is all. Some of it also comes down to your build. As a Blaster, yes, you could take Boxing/Tough/Weave plus Combat Jumping to give yourself a sliver of defense. But maybe you're better off taking an extra high-damage melee attack for anybody that gets in your face. "Dead" is the best status effect you can bestow on an enemy, and Blasters do it better than anybody. Back in the day, people used to use all kinds of tactics to take on enemies: sniping from far away, pulling a small group of enemies, herding them into a small space with a Tanker ... now the teams just steamroll everything, and you don't learn good tactical approaches for solo in that environment.

What are you thinking, maybe Steam/Thermal or Steam/Cold? Maybe make a Steam/Empathy and call him Spa-der Man.

This is all doom, most likely, or maybe it isn’t, but I’m certain it’s one or the other! Or maybe both or neither. In any case, it is news. All we need now is someone who understands the old animation systems and can start making new power sets. Plus a total upgrade of all of everything. Plus I could use an iice cream bar. You know, the usual.

I don’t know about pseudorandom; maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. I figured it was some kind of hash or algorithm that could be calculated to maintain consistency without having to have the character online. If players were allowed to set their own colors, I fear you’d end up with a huge proportion of players going for Evil Blood Red Super Darkity Evil Maroon color.

I like the feature where individual names are assigned different colors in the chat. It helps keep things sorted and draw the eye toward people whose colors you recognize. It would be wonderful if we could preview the color of the name in the character creator / rename window, so we can make adjustments if there's a specific color we're shooting for.

I used to be a voice actor like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee.

Debt is the game's way of telling you to be more careful. That's about it. It does slow down your XP gain, although you still make money (unless you have 2xp turned on). So it's also the game's way of telling you to spend more money on your build, I guess.

No, it wouldn’t make me want to PVP. The question is, why would it make PVP any more fun for anybody? As it stands, there is a community of people who like to PVP, and who have a modicum of skill. I’ve heard PVP described on this thread as more exciting combat against more engaging enemies. Am I wrong, or does this idea propose to water down the experience? “I love PVP because it’s such a dynamic challenge! Let’s make it better by luring in some clueless and unenthusiastic loot-hunters!” I think not. Besides, if the devs wanted prisms to be easier to get, all they have to do is tweak some drop rates. But as far as I know, they don’t want them to be super-available. If there were to be any loot, it wouldn’t be that.

Here are some silly names I thought of for characters I will never actually make: A rodent with ice powers: Mousicle A canine in a suit with fire powers: who works for the FBI: Fox Smolder A chicken with psionics: Professor Eggs

There’s an easy compromise. Charge by the letter. Different rates for different channels. HELP: free. GENERAL: first 100 characters free, then 10 inf/letter. LFG: free, but 10,000,000 for each letter in the word FARM. LOCAL: Free when your speaking range is set below a certain threshold. BROADCAST: Your character is deleted.