FFFF

Had a female character on live, a former priestess from another galaxy named Three Holes. I had this elaborate backstory, even a fairly detailed religion based on the concepts of fullness and emptiness. Made it to level 24 before I got my first snarky tell full of sexual innuendos. OMG! I had completely missed the trees for the forest. I logged off and just deleted the character out of sheer embarrassment.

So I dropped COH back in the day, around issue 19. Incarnates were just announced, inherent fitness was not a thing and mez effects would instantly drop toggles, mostly meaning a swift death sentence on most squishies. Annoyed with this, I played only characters which either had mez protection or where it wasn’t as large of a factor (i.e., Masterminds). I hadn’t picked up a blaster for probably 15 years. For some reasons my current scrapper experiments weren’t working out so I decided on a Fire/Martial character. Wow. Blasters just rule. It’s been such a silky smooth leveling experience that it’s causing dissonance from what I remember. I remember blasters being fun but frustrating. Mez effects seem not as bad. My character is almost always fighting from hover and even slept or held, no problem. She stays up and then keeps shooting (hover is even decently fast!) Having stamina at level 1, access to SOs right from the beginning, etc. has largely mitigated most of the early blaster issues. Sure, I’ve been defeated a couple of times but in each case, completely avoidable if I decided to play more conservatively. I’m eager to try another blaster, but after I get my current one to 50. I wonder how many old vets still retain their old biases from Live. I know I do. The game is the same but it’s not.

Did not know we could do that. Mind blown.

tl;dr - Playing Going Rogue solo and reading all the dialogue was fun and memorable So back when the game was live, I left around issue 19. That was well over a decade ago, so my mind is a bit fuzzy whether I remember inherent fitness and alpha slots being available before I left. One of the things I really didn't explore back then was Praetoria. Sure, I took a character through it once, but I quickly reverted to playing heroes and the occasional villain. I wasn't really into stories back then and just clicked the missions, figured out what the objectives were and did just that. That was just easier to do as a hero. Further, if you teamed, mission dialogue was just something that faded into the background. So over the last three weeks, an hour or two at a time, I took my Storm/Dark Corruptor, A Dark Stormy Night, from the tutorial to the portal leading to Talos Island. I played solo and took the time to read all the mission texts, the in-mission captions and watch the cut scenes. Wow, that experience was so fulfilling. It truly felt like reading a book with your character as the main character. One of the things that Going Rogue got right were the memorable characters. Everyone from Tunnel Rat, Seer 1381 to Penelope Yin. I loved that I was invested in saving Tunnel Rat, freeing seers from the Seer Network and that the actions of both Loyalists and Resistance members left a bad taste in my mouth. This is probably the experience that original devs intended. It's a bit of a shame that player expectations and the in-game experience both work against this. When teaming, everyone usually wants to beat all the baddies, click the glowies and move on. I understand that. Reading a big block of text for a mission dialogue isn't what a lot folks are into, especially on a team. Further, team members, apart from the leader, often don't even get to see the main mission dialogue text. It feels that there are a lot of implementation issues here and mission designs aren't team friendly from a story telling perspective. Anyway, I really enjoyed the play through experiencing Praetoria. There are quite a few contacts and missions I missed, so I plan on playing as a Loyalist next play through, probably as a stalker (hopefully mitigate all the ambushes, which was surprisingly the hardest part of Gold side).

So after abandoning a Staff/SR scrapper (see here), my newest experiment has been a Savage Melee/Radiation Armor scrapper. I already have a Psi/Radiation Armor brute so I figure since Rad Armor was so good just about any new primary would be good. Well, that hasn't worked out how I planned. Let's leave aside the fact that I'm beginning to think that Rad Armor is just better on brutes because of higher caps and a larger hit point base, but it's the Savage Melee side which has been the most disappointing. So far I picked Maiming Slash (good), Shred (ugh, what a tiny cone and slow animation), Blood Thirst (good), Vicious Slash (good) and Rending Flurry (jury's out). First without boxing (which I took for Tough), I don't think I have a smooth attack chain. Feels like Savage Strike needs to be taken. I generally don't like tier 1 powers in general, but it feels otherwise; the attack chain has too many gaps. No problems with Maiming Slash and Vicious Slash, it's Shred and Rending Flurry that seem awkward to use. How exactly do you chain an attack together with this mismatch of attacks? 2 x single target, 1 cone, 1 PBAoE. I've also heard mixed reviews on both Hemorrhage (a DoT?) and Savage Leap (a teleport power with a long recharge). I love the concept character I've made - she's bio-engineered mutant who became a savage after escaping, but the attacks feel awkward. And I hate the Exhausted message that shows up. I'm looking for advice and the viewpoint of folks who have brought up a savage melee character to 50.

Honestly, that's an amazing portfolio of characters! I had a few (around 11-12) characters who were fully built during Live, and just a bunch of characters in the teens to late 20s to goof around. I wish I had built more teaming characters as for a long time I just built scrappers and blasters (who were solo oriented). The most fun I had was when I started building tanks and assembling teams around my tanks. I probably clocked the most hours on an Ice/SS tank who was modestly IO'ed but I could always build a team around. She was fun largely because she ran so beautifully even exempted down. By no means was she the toughest tank, but probably my most fun character from a teaming standpoint.

It’s amazing to see you finish one of the hardest TFs in a game on a blaster! You did something that was considered undoable during Live, and then only by rads or poisons due to the immense amounts of debuffs needed. I’ve had to resize what is now considered possible on Homecoming several times already. Thanks for expanding that boundary once again.

So back on Live, I used to have purpose built characters that I used for specific circumstances. Hard TFs? - My Fire/Shield Scrapper. Teaming/support? - Sonic/Sonic Corruptor or FF/Sonic Defender I never got around to build a GM killer though I had a build worked out for a Rad/Psy Defender and a Thugs/Traps MM. And while I had a Fire/Kin Controller who I used for occasional farming, she mostly became my AV soloer. However despite that, I felt I had a rich variety of characters to play to suit most situations. I had a lot of concept characters too, some of which became surprisingly powerful, but most were just quirky. Right now, I have a single level 50, a farming character who is completely finished, decked out in the finest IO sets, but whom I'm already bored with. I miss having my tool kit, but I'm having a flight of altitus trying out power sets and even whole ATs (Sentinels) that I've never tried on Live. I don't have anything close to a complete variety of characters and am hoping that inspiration will strike at some point. What's your "tool kit" look like? Or maybe it's better to ask, what's your portfolio of characters look like?

The teaming dynamic in City of Heroes is still among the best out there. I remember starting WOW (in its very early days) and not seeing as robust of a LFG system. Sidekicking, 8-person teams (which was large for its time) and exemplar/flashback were all so revolutionary. My absolute fondest memories were joining some random mismash of ATs and levels just having everything work out. It's so fun, and I've met some great people through that. It is addictive. I say that knowing the same source of the game's strength is also its greatest weakness. You just need to run into one bad egg to ruin it other people. The AFKer, the guy who will just solo off on their own, and simply the unpleasant. I think all of us have enough of these stories to fill a small tome. I still enjoy the game. I'm pleased to donate to this effort (and other COH efforts), but I've become just a bit more thin skinned than in the past. I stay solo unless it's to help out someone for a few minutes. I find that better.

Is this new? Position defenses (melee/range/AoE) not defend against Toxic? As I understand it, there's a check on position and then a second check on type? Is that not how it works anymore?

Well, hit level 34 and couldn't beat an even leveled Silver Mantis elite boss. I've had scrappers in the past that treated this mission as a speed bump. I had hope because she narrowly beat Nosferatu earlier this evening (probably because SR made it difficult to hit his heals) but this is as far as I can take her. I ended up with 41% positional defenses but the offensive output was just too poor. Oh well, back to the lab...

Nothing stops you from playing that way. The game still has merchant-purchasable SOs and DOs. Invention salvage actually makes it easier. Get 2-3 pieces of orange salvage and you’re pretty much set, since you can insta-sell them for 500k each. I have a character who runs on mostly common crafted IOs, a few SOs and crafting a few useful, found recipes. Once you get around 50-60% level 25-30 common IOs, you have no influence worries. The character is absolutely fine solo and quality of enhancements are largely irrelevant in team settings anyway since buffs and debuffs are so powerful.

Mine just hit level 30 and I love both her concept and how stylistic everything looks. A+ on form over function. It’s the function part that bothers me. She’s Staff/SR and easily the weakest scrapper combination I’ve ever played. With mostly common IOS and a couple of cheap sets she has 33% positional defense so it’s not like she’s easy to bring down. I think the SR secondary is holding up. But staff… Feels like every battle is whap-whap-whap-whap. There’s a fair amount of AoE but everything is damage over time. And the feel is whittling down everything instead of the ‘crunchiness’ (big hits) I’m used to on scrappers. I can see this as a great tanker set as the sustain is great, but feels weak on a scrapper. Lots of long fights and rarely is the character able to 1-hit a minion.

Part way through them. Just jarred seeing them as random spawn in the zone.

So I ventured out to the new (to me, at least) Dark Astoria and saw zombies, the Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, etc. What I didn’t expect were the Tsoo! The same Tsoo who are running protection rackets, gambling, and petty drug rackets in Steel Canyon? That Tsoo? I nearly laughed out loud. This is Daredevil vs. Galactus levels of mismatch. I mean come on, CoT are ancient undead magicians from a powerful civilization. The Banished Pantheon are devotees of an undying god of death. The Tsoo have um magic tattoos? I realize that the Tsoo were chosen by the live devs, but it just felt like a miss. Feels like a missed opportunity to add a new magic-based villain group, or re-use the Mu civilization, maybe Carnival of Shadows? Are there no other high level magic threats?

Will be a while until you get there, but Ghost Widow’s patron arc. One that is both more readily accessible and entertaining is Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by Peter Themari. Note it may make you feel like a total scumbag or a true villain.

Yay, saw the link in time. Donated for the first time!

I think this is absolutely right. Many years ago, I used to work at a company where there were people of all sorts of political leanings. You'd get a sense of who they were because they'd note that they attended church (might be a conservative) or they volunteer at a homeless shelter (progressive maybe?) However, political discussions and opinions were actively discouraged, and people generally respected that. Discussions were either about work or family-safe topics like sports, school or plans for the weekend. I worked with people of all sorts of political affiliations for years and politics just didn't come up (very often), and to this day, I'm not positive about the political leanings of some of my former coworkers. Advance to 2023 and you have (in the US at least) a subsection of the population who not only can't shut up about politics but actively tries to engage everyone around them about politics. It's like they can't help themselves and are totally oblivious that it's exhausting for everyone around them. This is a game, so for me, it's a quick click of the ignore button for offenders. Don't pollute my escapist fantasy by bloviating opinions I don't want to hear.

Haha. New goal unlocked. One-shot an AV by flinging him off of an infinite cliff. Cackling just at the thought.

I'll start (with a few). 1. There a number of mobs that go through the long Total Focus animation where they jump up volleyball player style and try to pound your character via an overhead, double-handed smash. I love interrupting that, putting the mob on their butts, preferably with a power that does knock back. Bonus points if the mob cons blue and the mob gets knocked far away. Worth at least a grin, but mostly a cackle. 2. Anyone remember Hellion golf? Take a power with knockback on a higher level character and punt them across Atlas Park. 3. Going parkour style across a vertically challenging zone like Steel Canyon or Skyway City. Typically this is done with super jump, and unfortunately I remember there were gaps where combat jumping couldn't reach far enough. Anyways, it's always amusing to see how far you can get without touching the lava (street level). Bonus points if you manage to bounce around the tram tracks until you slide off. 4. Burn patches / ignite on gatherings of Circle of Thorns on the rooftops of King's Row. I love watching them flee and fall off the edge of those super tall buildings.

So I left the Live servers (issue 20 or thereabouts) before getting too much into the Incarnate system, and really sort of re-experienced them recently. Wow, it's a hot mess in my opinion. It feels like there was a unified vision of what is should be at one point, but changes were tacked on that made it worse. I sense at one point, they wanted to both a) reward people who played their characters post level 50, and b) wanted a way of progression where you could achieve your incarnate powers by achieving in-game milestones. This way you wouldn't just sit in a farm gaining levels to get more powerful. The implementation of that vision is rather bad. There's two base currencies - shards and threads. And recipes where you can craft the salvage needed for each power from each type. It honestly took me a while to find this out, simply because I just didn't notice you could scroll down for each power for alternate recipes. What's weirder is shard and thread recipes are exclusive - the salvage you craft for one can't be used for the alternate recipe. Given how many threads drop versus shards and the exclusivity of each recipe type, it creates a false impression that you need both. It vexed me at first there wasn't a thread to shard conversion when there was a shard to thread conversion button readily available - this adds to the confusion in my opinion. The interface for the powers leave a lot to be desired. You click on the interface and are first presented with a 5 slots which are locked. Okay, that is straightforward. As you level, these become unlocked and there are mission-based ways to unlock these. So far so good. However, after that it's a mess. You are then introduced to a variety of salvage that you must acquire in order to purchase the powers for each unlocked slots. The interface shows you a cost conversion in shards/threads and other prerequisite salvage in order for you to purchase your powers. Further, as you move up power tiers the subsequent power is often consumed in the creation of the higher tier power. This feels odd. As a player you are immediately left wondering if you need to re-purchase the consumed power again or if the new power has all the capabilities of your old power with additional benefits. I'm assuming the latter interpretation but the interface honestly makes this confusing as the highlighted lines to the lower level power disappears. It would just be cleaner if the lower level power was just locked (i.e., marked as permanently purchased) so it would leave no doubt. The overall experience is just rather odd. If you have a lot of threads (my highest just reached veteran level 24), the interface with the first tab for power slots, a tab for power creation, a tab for salvage creation/conversion just feels like thumbing through a poorly designed web catalog. I realize that games like Path of Exile, Diablo and similar have elaborate skill trees, and it feels they could have implemented something like that. This is an old game, running on private servers, so please put down your pitchforks, as I'm not suggesting that. I realize dev time is precious and from what I've seen they prioritize well. The interface is just underwhelming/confusing and it doesn't feel like character growth rather closer to buying upgrades for a computer.

So when kids are young they often don’t interact much together instead engage in parallel play. Largely because they haven’t developed the skills that compose socialization. As a mature adult, and a mostly solo player, it’s funny to me that I do the same. So I’m one of those weirdos that play a MMO but plays by themselves. However, I like seeing people around. I love flying through Steel Canyon and seeing another hero fly past or watch a super speeder veer up the ramps. I even have a chat tab up for that’s dedicated to the Looking for Group and Help channels, I have no intention in joining a DFB or Katie Hanon, but it’s neat seeing teams being formed. I’m always pleased to see how helpful people are in the Help channel - that hasn’t changed since Live. I really missed being around the activities rather than partaking them myself. It’s nice having no FOMO in this game as I played a lot on live and just do what I want instead of feeling compelled to do anything or prove something to others. Anyways, it’s nice to be back and just soak up the atmosphere.

That was a fun time. Largely because I was playing so casually and my highest hero at the time was a level 16 fire/fire tanker. My mind was absolutely blown that they were going to raise the level cap to 50. I hadn't even made it out of Steel Canyon so to me, it was incredible you had players who had chewed through the content and had a number of characters at max level. What I didn't know at the time that players just had a tank bring like a hundred Freakshow into a dumpster and leveled instantly. There were no caps on the number of mobs taunted so this was abused mercilessly. This was just a different era in the game. Characters struggled until level 20 when you could get stamina. Everyone and their uncle 6-slotted hasten because how overpowered it was. Regen hadn't been nerfed yet (I regret I never played one of the ridiculous early versions), and then nerfed again and again. Haha. No one really knew how most powers worked. I remember a lot of manual testing to actually find out whether or not attacks were properly balanced against other similar primaries (haha, spoiler - they weren't. Remember how pretty and awfully slow the early martial arts powers were?) You also had things like fire controllers being able to summon 9 fire imps versus that sad solo pets that ice and earth controller got. There were so many balance holes. I think the devs had always planned to raise it to 50, and did it when their metrics showed that a significant portion of the player base hit max level. I think the APPs were really enticing at the time. Armor for a blaster? Fireball for a tanker? Sign me up! Also with fitness pool and hasten being near mandatory, a lot of players looked forward to additional power choices and slots.

Lol. You don't know me. I think projecting someone's motivations for an idea is silliness at best and somewhat ignorant at worst. My current play consists of leveling a staff/sr scrapper. She's badly built, and the animations are pretty but slow. I still enjoy it. I don't power game not because I don't know how but because I feel I've been there, done that. With that said, having modes where milestones for reaching difficult to achieve tasks and being acknowledged for that in game would not be bad for the game. I say that even though I may never partake in them myself. I forgot how fussy these forums can be. I should know given I was somewhat prominent on the old ones back in the day (no desire to repeat that here). For those of you who were constructive, I appreciate it.

Would love to an option for a hardcore mode. Basically, a bright red title or similar above your character that signifies you haven’t died yet. You lose your special title if you happen to face plant and the character just becomes a standard character. Perhaps a tiny star or similar symbol by the title for every souvenir you’ve collected. Might deter the PL folks a bit but I’m well aware you can get around a lot of that via multi-boxing. Would love to see someone solo a fire/fire blaster this way. And it would add a bit of fear / challenge into this game. Maybe a way to get true bragging rights.