Coyotedancer

I have to admit, I'm having a hell of a time seeing why someone would /jranger this idea... We're in serious need of some new variation when it comes to the hair we have and this seems like it would be an easier way to get that than trying to introduce entirely new parts. Yes, a lot of the styles we have are a butt-ugly hot mess, but it would be worth it to get access to the handful of descent ones across the board. None of my guys would wear a Beehive, but I'd definitely get some use out of some of the longer hairstyles on them... and yes, I can think of a few of the gals who I would use Barbarian and other styles from the guys' side on if they were available.

Run on Ultra and play around with the advanced settings. I don't remember off-hand what all of those options are set to on my installation, but I cranked it to the proverbial nines and then tinkered until I managed to get the shadows, reflections and that "soft-focus" look for more distant objects exactly where I wanted them. It took awhile. ETA: I should add one thing. Be warned... Those graphics settings do come at a price. Even on a stout machine with a good card, you'll see some slow-down and mobs that fade in an out when you jump into something with a lot of "moving parts", like a ship raid or the meteor farm map.

I rebalance brightness and Contrast on some images if they're too dark, and I resize and crop sometimes... But mostly that's just my graphics settings.

I hate the color... The RP vs. Roleplaying question doesn't give me the heebies either way, but that god-awful pinky-purple color is just fugly. My wish is for it to become color-tintable like our titles.

Plus an extra Chantry Because the Shard is gorgeous. Another set from Praetoria... Because ALSO grgeous. And one more from Indy and one from the distant past... Yeah. I may have a screenshot collection that numbers in the many-thousands of images at this point. 😆

Two of the screens I posted were red-side... Saint Martial and Nerva. Here are a few more, for people who don't get around to the Isles very often.

What? You think rogues don't need defending? And some heroes are just asking to be stalked... 😆

I'll keep my hero Stalkers and rogue Defenders, thanks.

There was no malice intended, guys. No one ranted about it or acted like an ass-hat about it... They just requested something different. They knew me and what I could potentially bring to the party fairly well at that point, and they also knew that if they asked for something other than what I'd brought, I was willing to switch. Doing that is just a point of courtesy as far as I'm concerned. Ditching the group entirely over it seems like an over-reaction. Anyway, my issue with the support characters in my crew just is what it is... Most don't really have a good niche, so they end up not being played. If your experience has been different? Good! You've had better luck than I have. Enjoy it. Embrace it. Go forth and kick copious digital butt... I'm just going to be over here tinkering with builds, trying to figure out exactly how I want to turn some neglected teamers into solo terrors.

They were closer to being speeders than most roleplaying types, I'd say. More-so than they'd want to admit, I suspect. But full-on, competitive speedrunners who were experts at it? Nah. They were just marginally serious players who were trying to go for efficiency. They weren't out to break time records... They just wanted to get through the weekly TFs/SFs as quickly as they could and didn't think my supports would help them do that. At least, not as well as other types of characters could. For what it's worth, I don't think I ever saw anyone bring a Controller or a Dom along on those taskforce runs, either. Khedians of either type, likewise, though I do remember one person bringing a crab-spider "spidermind" VEAT along pretty regularly.

In fairness, they wanted that Scrap for RP purposes, and for her toughness more than the added damage... (It was a Liberty and we were planning on leap-frogging the sidekick AVs. I off-tank with Tess and our regular "back-up Brutester" wasn't around. ) It was more typical of the gang to ask for one of the scarier Stalkers, so I could both spike problematic mobs and run the maps and Assemble to particular points. That's all pretty off-topic for this thread, though.

It's true. I may have also heard that "Why are you soloing in an MMO?!?"-thing a few times. 😆

You can only hear the friends putting together the teams say, "We probably won't need your [Defender X] with this group. Bring [DPS Chatacter Y] instead? It'll make things go faster" so many times before you realize just how unwanted those support types are. I mean, my blaster or scrap probably wasn't exactly needed either, but it was still more valued taking up that spot on the team.

I don't use my Homecoming forum/global name as a character name in-game, so there's pretty much zero chance of recognition there unless you /getglobal me for some reason, or you're looking at one of the global chat channels where I still post once in a blue moon. This name is also different from the forum/global name that I use on Paragon or what I had back in the Live days on Liberty, so there's no association there, either. All that means I get to fly pretty far under the radar when I'm playing. A few people here know who I am in the City... mostly because they're on my Friends list and I rarely have that set to hidden... But that's about it. Otherwise? I am the great unknown. And I kind'a like it that way. 👍

So, I may as well just ditch this collection of support characters I have, shouldn't I? It really seems like they're no longer useful or welcomed anywhere in the game anymore. (Outside of Aeon, at least. Which I'm not a huge fan of. 😝 ) They've been well-nigh-useless on high level teams from day one on Homecoming.... And, knowing that, I didn't build them for end game play. Even though they're all "finished" 50+ characters with full set-builds and (*gasp* *horror*) VET LEVELS, I built them specifically to run exemplar with mid- and lower level teams. Because that's where support still felt at least marginally useful and desirable on an average, random PUG. And then posts like this one started showing up. <_< "OMG! Exemplar characters are ruining the game! You're making it terrible for The Real Lowbies! Get thee back, foul Power Gamers!" So... yeah. I guess I'm a Bad Person and I should feel bad for ever bringing that Dark Defender or Rad Corruptor along on a 30-something team. The gang have just been sitting there, gathering proverbial dust for most of the last year. HIgh-level doesn't need them. Low-level doesn't want them. Maybe I'll respec them all to run solo-only. At least until that also, somehow, becomes a BadWrong practice that's killing people's love for the game...

Over here, if we were using the PvE rules. I suspect that it would come down to a cat-fight between Semnai (regen monster BS/Bio Brute) and Okuri (Well-nigh unhittable Night Widow), who would end up eventually wearing each other down in a battle of a million paper-cuts... At which point the ACTUAL winner (Kaikara/White Thorn, the KM/Bio Stalker with all the damage bonuses, who hits like a sack of bricks and would have been watching the entire mess from a safe distance, in Hide. waiting for an opportunity-) would pop in and absolutely flatten the battered survivor before they knew what hit them. Because sometimes having a clever, if shifty, plan is the best super power.

"Yeah. Sure. Why not..." and "Are you nuts?"

This. I would be so annoyed at having to make that choice and play under those limitations that my most likely response would be to say to hell with the game entirely. Just walking away would be the less bitter pill than losing all but one of my crew and only getting to play that one in an incomplete form.

Just a reminder to the Powers That Be... They still need an Earth epic pool as well.

There's always one...

The changes to how we build up Incarnate XP, the post-50 leveling grants and taking the ludicrous time gates off of the rewards for running Dark Astoria's mission arcs. All of that has actually made it reasonable to Incarnate a character solo. I definitely *DO NOT MISS* the days of endlessly grinding iTrials. Making them completely optional? I love it. I know, I know... The TeamsTeamsTeamsOMGTEEEAAAMMMMS! people probably hate it with the fury of a hundred suns. You guys want us all to have no choice but to run another thousand BAFs with you.... But seriously, being able to Incarnate my crew on my own schedule, without having to worry about getting a few dozen other people together off-hours on Pacific time? It really is a Nice Thing.

As usual, which shard you're on may have something to do with it, too. I'm over on Ev with the roleplayers... Some of that crew are serious about playing the game, and some see playing as a side-line to their REAL hobby of chatting it up in someone's nightclub base. That probably makes our "typical average" of good vs bad vs indifferent potential team-mates look a bit different than Indom or Ex's.

Have you considered that maybe... just maybe... none of us are seeing this supposed flood of absolute know-nothing power-leveled n00bs that you're convinced are out there? I'm probably not the best judge, since I'm not a full on all the time PUGster, but I know I really, truly haven't. People seem to be about the same mix of good and bad they always have been.

If possible, make it two rescues and give one of them a "+stealth" aura power like Steamy Mist... So that the other hostage (and maybe they themselves, too-) constantly loose track of the hero rescuing them and have to be re-collected any time said-hero gets more than two feet from them.