Coyotedancer

It's kinder to "bus your beasts", so to speak... Go T-o-Ting near an AE, ferry or train station and just lead the thing to a drone if you're on a character who has trouble with EBs. There are several good locations like that.

I've mentioned it before, but... Yeah. I'm a "for fun" fire farmer. (Goodies aside, I really do just enjoy doing it for its own sake.) Logging in Ossuni, turning on my playlist and running through a bunch of goons zen-style is relaxing. I also like going out to the Shard zones and just flying around, looking at things. And doing endless rounds of Prezzie-opening in Talos during Christmas... (That tends to be a zen-thing for me, like the farming. I used to gather crafting materials in Aion the same way.)

I set it to auto-accept, because I hate having to find my cursor and click the button when it pops up. And among the family SG it definitely gets used. There's some fun just seeing which buffs people get. The only thing I hate about it? I *always* seem to get The Fool right before I walk into one of those twisty-turny Oranbegan maps. Which means I'm going to spend time getting caught ON EVERY SINGLE TORCH in the place. I do not like the extra movement speed on those maps. 😝

I'm not at all sure we needed EBs added to trick or treating,,, but... BadgesBadgesBadgesBadges

"Damned straight," Grey Kestrel says, signing the form. "Like all of us who work our butts off to keep this rock in one piece are *human*."

I've done some City characters that were concept-first and some that were build-first... and others that were a combination of the two. I'm sort of an oddball, though. While I can and have built some over-engineered min/max nightmares, I typically don't. I rarely give a rat's rosy red bum what's considered The Best by the power-builders. This game just doesn't require you to have exactly the "right" power picks and the "right" build choices. It gives us plenty of room to play around with (*gasp* *horror*) suboptimal choices. That makes Concept First a lot more viable and fun. Okay, yes. It's good fun to tear a hole in the proverbial world with UberL33TMan or his sidekick Meta-Monster.... But it's also fun to see if you can make it through the game with a AR Sentinel or a tri-form Peacebringer. Or some randomly-rolled combination of AT and powersets from the Slot Machine Challenge. Or a 'unicorn' combination that you've never seen anyone else try. You could even build that character WITHOUT TAKING TOUGH AND WEAVE. OMG. The heresy. 😆 But yeah. Let go of that need to stick to Only What's Best. This is an easy-mode baby-game, remember? UberL33TMan is overkill. He's fun to play with, but so are a lot of other things.

I *wish* we had a rooster tail... Currently, alas, we don't.

My were-chicken is Not Amused. (But I am! 😆 )

I'm all in for bird tails of whatever design. A rooster tail would be great for my totes-not-a-were-chicken character, but at this point I'd be happy with any bird-tail not made of fire.

Yeah... They're not unheard of. One tabletop Ars Magica group I considered joining out here in the Real World did that, too. I found it a little odd, but in the end it wasn't strange enough to make me do more than raise an eyebrow. I ended up being invited to join a different game before I ever got around to filling the silly thing out. 😝 Here on Homecoming? I've only been involved with one group that tried anything like that, and it was very short-lived. The SG was supposed to follow a fairly specific theme, and the "application" was designed to reenforce that point. It seemed a little nit-picky to me, but I'm a Dirty Casual when it comes to City RP so... Different standards and all that.

Just something to consider... If every single group you've run into is problematic, the "problem" may not be completely with them. Given your reaction to this recent rejection, and what you seem to classify as abuse and harassment on these players' part, you could also be reading a lot more hostility into the situation than is really there. Past experiences can color your perceptions and expectations in ways that may make misreading another person's intentions way too easy.

I'm going to be a little harsh here... No one is required to roleplay with anyone else. Especially not someone they aren't comfortable dealing with. Full stop. It doesn't really matter *WHY* they aren't comfortable with you. The reason doesn't need to be "fair" or justified or even rational. They don't even have to give you a reason. Because it's not all about you. You don't get to tell other players who they let into their group. Just chalk it up to not fitting in with that particular group and move on.

That one Freakolympics mission on the big King's Row map is just prone to that. Some of the boss groups won't spawn immediately and have a habit of showing up in areas you've already explored. It's been that way since the Live days. It doesn't seem to happen on other missions using that map (In the Terra Conspiracy arc, for instance, or a few missions from The Instant Army-), so it may be something about the mission design rather than the map or the game engine.

Vorkan, as established in his DA Personal Mission, definitely WANTS that job... But he wasn't the one who was going to get it according to the AMA.

While Kinetic Melee is considered questionable on other ATs... KM Stalkers hit like a sack of bricks. Having a real BU makes a difference, and Burst right out of Hide is great fun. Kai, my main here, is a KM/Bio/Dark Stalker. My very first Praetorian character, Shade in Shadow, was KM/WP and soloed all the way through gold side back-in-the-day. The original version of my old Liberty main was a Dual Blade/Willpower/Mu Stalker. Kestrel was leveled mostly solo on the red side and that also went pretty well. DB is Lethal damage, though, so that slows things down. A lot more things will laugh at those swords in the mid-levels. KM's Smash and Energy are much more fun against DE rock and crystal monsters, robots, Circle spectrals, armored Crey goons and that kind of thing. The DE mushrooms will still think you're funny, though. And at higher levels the Hydras will just barf on you a little more. 😆

People on Ev are, in my experience at least, a lot chattier than people on Ex or Torch (The other two shards I've spent time on-). I couldn't believe at first just how quiet Excelsior teams were after I'd gotten used to Everlasting. 'Whole taskforces done without anyone saying a word to each other in the team chat... No mention of being on a shared Discord, either. That was a pretty big difference.

Everyone's got to start somewhere. The real estate market is crazy these days. 😝

In the past, I would have said to try running those support types with mid-level teams instead of high-level groups. That's the point in the game where you're still needed, and it's what I used to do with my defenders and controllers and such. I even designed their builds in some cases around that idea. ... And then people started grumping about how much they hated having exemp-ed level 50s on their mid- and low-level teams, and how those of us playing that way were ruining their game. So, I don't do that anymore and have stopped recommending that anyone else try it. I shelved my support characters, and pretty much only run them with the family SG these days. If you can find a group of lower-level people like that, who are willing to put up with you "wrecking their leveling experience" with your support character, it's still fun, though. And you'll definitely feel more useful than you would running with a level 50 PUG.

Grey Kestrel nods and says, "Damn straight. There's a *reason* the Revenant Guardian project doesn't show up as a line-item in the R&D budget anymore... 'Pretty hard to finance a clandestine research facility when the place is a burned-out ruin and the staff are all feeding the Natterlings. 'Wonder how THAT happened..."

She's a legacy Midnighter, a Paragon University student and an Oranbegan death mage's mortal apprentice. See that "Kai's Diary" link in my sig? Yeah... That's hers. 😆 I *also* have a revised version of my old main from the Liberty days here on Homecoming... This Grey Kestrel is a scrapper rather than a stalker, but otherwise is the same old Kes. Ridiculously loyal to Scir. Has a perma-summoned Adept partner. Very snarky, prone to solving problems with her swords and generally your typical Rogue-who's-better-at-heart-than-she'll-ever-admit.

If they're hanging around a public space, they have to expect "the public" to come and go around them... Like Grey said, imagine a group of friends meeting at a restaurant. That doesn't mean they need to let "the public" into their session, though. How many of us would appreciate some stranger barging uninvited into our conversation at that restaurant? How many strangers would look at the table of chatting friends and think "Oh! A conversation! I should totally 'put myself Out There' and join in! It'll be GREAT-"? So, I'd say it's one of those situations where they should get to do their own thing in peace... while also letting other people go about their own business, just like we do in public spaces out here in the Real World.

Tossed some kibbles at the server hamsters on the Wolfepack's behalf.

When Longbow just isn't quite morally questionable enough for your purposes,,,

And you think I would want that... or consider that a good idea... why? I'm not one of the people grumping constantly about how the City is an easy-mode baby-game. I'm the one who runs around with a family SG made of relative newbies who are doing well to handle current EBs without dying regularly or running away and accidentally aggroing four other groups in their efforts to play Brave Sir Robin. 😝

I can't say jack about her power level.... The character, to put it bluntly, is about as developed as an unexposed Polaroid. That was just the plan mentioned by the old game devs in one of the post-shutdown Lore AMAs.