Coyotedancer

The insular-group thing definitely happens... But that was as true back in the live days as it is now, and isn't in any way limited to the City world. Humans are troupe primates. Like every other related species, we're all about hierarchies and the boundaries between in-groups ("us") and out-groups ("them"). It's just a part of who and what we are, so the behavior and social constructs are damned near universal. So... no way a multiplayer video game was ever going to be free of that. No human group interaction ever really is.

Preeeeetty sure Power Creep already exists on Everlasting, at least. I think I may even have PUGed with him once upon a time. 😝

I want a Plaid badge. SO do. 🤣

Running with different crowds, maybe... Some content does seem to attract more IOed characters than other things, like we were talking about upthread with the Hami raids, and there's always going to be some difference between various parts of the community. I'd fully expect a group recruited from, say, a channel full of devoted badgers or task force runners to tend more towards set-builds than a group that was pulled entirely from an RP-centric SG, for instance. I may spend more time with the later while you're mostly running with the former.

And here I thought *I* was a nut for having three versions of Kai.... 😝

When 8-player PUG Hamis become commonplace... then it'll look like an issue. Until then? It's just an example of how far a determined group of power-gamers can push a specific set of min/maxed-to-the-nines builds.

I don't think it would be BadWrong to be able to transfer iBits to other characters on your own account... but I'd draw the line at being able to auction house them, or trade them between accounts. Doing the work yourself on one character and having it benefit another of your crew doesn't seem terrible to me, in other words, but having someone else entirely do the work for you? That would be an issue.

Yeah... Hami raids do seem to be one of those places where the "build invested" gather. Ship raids are really variable, but the "usual suspect" core characters you see showing up at almost every one also tend to be among the better-geared-than-average. I don't spend a huge amount of time in iTrials, so I have less of a feel for the crowd there, but just given the investment of time Incarnation represents, I suspect those characters would also be on the more-tuned side. That's content that at least marginally more serious players seem to be drawn to over the real casual types.

I do run with some end-game teams (Both ridiculous wrecking balls and... Well, let's say "otherwise", to be polite. Like that ITF I tossed one of my Dark Defenders into Saturday afternoon. Yiiikes. o_0) along with the mid-level groups I prefer for my support types. The lower level people rarely seem to have much in the way of procs or set bonuses at all, honestly. I mean easily more than half have exactly bupkis. That's why I feel like I have to keep reminding people in these threads just how NOT typical our IO-ed to the gills monster builds are. It's way too easy to fall into the idea that those are what everyone and their sister is running out there in-game, even though that's not necessarily the case.

I haven't seen a huge increase in the number of characters with massive set-bonus lists out in the game over the course of the last year-and-change, Haijinx... and as I've said before, I habitually look at the info panes of the people I'm teamed with. This power inflation thing just isn't happening to any huge extent. The majority of the characters I see on Everlasting and Excelsior may have a few procs and specials, and maybe a handful of set bonuses listed. They're just not the softcapped-to-everything/IO-ed out unstoppable powerhouses that most of us forum-dwellers know how to build.

You guys are falling into that "We forum regulars and MIDS gurus are typical Joe Average players"-trap again...

Or in Pocket D.... o_0

Nuthin' wrong with a good smash team.

Next up in my gang is Karcharias... Water/Bio/Lev Sentinel... aka "Shark-bait". I originally built him just to be a storage mule for my spare PvP recipes and IOs, never expecting to level or actually play him. Somewhere along the line, though, I figured "Why not?" and decided to give him a shot at being a real member of the crew.

I know at least one person who does that with his farmer just for the LOLs. 🤣

This. I'm only a very casual roleplayer (at most), but it seems more reasonable to me to answer a tell OOC unless it is very specifically aimed at the character I'm on rather than at me as a player.

'Good example of why I should just keep out of anything in the Roleplay forum, I guess... Rogue-life is best-life, though. 😝

'Not going to play the "character game" here... So consider this answer coming from me rather than from Kai or Tav or Arte. On the level of pure game-play practicality, the first thing you have to consider is social. Do you want to team regularly or mostly run solo with that character? Because going red-side will give you much less opportunity to play with groups. It's not far off from playing gold-side, in all honesty. There are many, many more players active blue-side, and that makes finding a team a whole lot easier in Paragon. If you don't mind soloing most of the time? Red-side's writing is better and the zones are more interesting. If it suits them, personality-wise. That makes it worth it.

But not every build is going to include it. Sure... you CAN get it, if only from an Epic or Patron pool. But it's not a universal choice and I'd argue that it shouldn't have to be.

Aa a trial or TF mechanic? Could be fun! But, again, something like that added to "regular" game content would wreck things for solos/small teams that didn't have control powers, and that's just not a Good Thing.

It would also pretty much kill that content/part of the game for anyone who routinely solos or plays duo/trio on characters that are something other than the "required" type for dealing with those enemies. That alone would earn the idea a hard NO from me. While I like the idea of having optional challenge modes, being able to run regular content solo or small-team with anything you want is a big positive feature of the game as far as I can see. Mission mobs that invalidate that by requiring specific powers to overcome definitely fall into Do Not Want territory.

I just hate it because of how many damned "runners" we have in this game... Longbow Eagles, Skyraiders, Witches. You know the ones. 'Jet off to the far end of nowhere at full speed the second you target them, while you're stuck moving at the speed of a sleepy garden snail? Yeah. That crap. If we're going to insist on having mobs that run for the hills, at least let us chase their cowardly butts. <_<

What Riot said. Movement speed suppression in PvE needs to go the way of the dodo bird. <_<

Twilight Silver is back up for grabs... It just sounded a little too much like a My Little Pony character to suit my snarky blaster. XD

This should be fun... So, even though I swore from the start that I was NOT going to have a huge number of alts out here in Homecoming-land, I've ended up with a small tribe anyway. *sigh* Exactly 50 (Edited to add: It's 56 now. *facepalms*). I guess a horde was kind of inevitable. <_< Anyway... Total Number of Characters on my main account (@Coyotedancer): 54 Total Number of Characters on my secondary account (@Laughingcrow): 2 Number of Completed characters (Equipped and Incarnated level 50s): 53 Number of Incomplete characters: 3 ( Joyful, Neryth and Snickers) Brutes: 5 Blasters: 3 Corruptors: 4 Controllers: 1 Defenders: 10 Dominators: 1 Masterminds: 2 Peacebringers: 1 Scraps: 6 Sentinels: 8 Stalkers: 13 Tanks: 2 Origins: All Magic. Every single one. Heroes: 45 (*) Rogues: 10 Vigs: 1 Villains: 0 (*) Quite a few more of my Oranbegans ought to be rogues, but the majority of their play-time is spent with hero-side teams, which can make having a villain-side alignment problematic when it comes to forming and staying on those teams. So... They pretend to be heroes for reasons of sheer playtime practicality. I don't have the time or patience to build two identical red/blue-side versions of every one of them like I did with Kai. ===== Characters on Torchbearer: 5 ... My "Assorted Magical Beings" Shonokin (50) Dark/WP Sentinel - Hero Winterslight (50) Fire/Ice Sentinel - Hero Red Traveller (50) KM/Fire Stalker - Hero Snickerdoodles (39) Claws/WP Stalker - Hero Carwyn (50) Staff/WP Scrap - Hero ===== Characters on Excelsior: 10 ... My Elysion 'Bird-things' (They're a non-canon species of Rularuu. Faathim's creatures.) Iah (50) Fire/Bio Sentinel - Hero Aken (50) DP/Energy Sentinel - Rogue Anut (50) Dark/Bio Stalker - Hero Khafre (50) KM/Energy Stalker - Hero Sokari (50) Dark/Ice Stalker - Hero Tamun (50) Dark/Dark Corruptor - Hero Sefkhet (50) DB/WP Scrap - Hero Amset (50) Storm/Electric Defender - Hero Khata (50) WP/DB Tank - Hero and Haroeris (50) Claws/Fire Brute - Hero, on @Laughingcrow ===== Characters on Everlasting: 41.. My Oranbegans and their Assorted Companion Entities The Sanctum of Shadows cabal- Tavaris (50) Dark/Bio Sentinel - Rogue Artemian (50) PsyBlast/Bio Sentinel - Hero Sarhadi (50) Dark/Dark Blaster - Rogue Kaikara (50) KM/Bio Stalker - Rogue White Thorn (50) KM/Bio Stalker - Hero (This one is Kai's blue-side "secret identity") Windwhispered (50) PsiMelee/Energy Stalker - Hero Void's Thorn (50) Dark/Dark Defender - Hero (Another version of Kai. Her 'Avatar of the Void' future self) Andris (50) Kin/Electric Defender - Hero Narada (50) Nature/Water Defender - Hero Semnai (50) Broadsword/Bio Brute - Vig Xhelethe (50) Katana/WP Scrap - Hero Karnaim (50) Titan/Bio Scrap - Hero Aegis of Serenity (50) Illusion/Time Controller - Hero Ananka (50) Necro/Thermal Mastermind - Hero Ordus Chronos, the time travellers- Graceful Ivory Mask (50) Time/Dark Defender - Hero Gentleman Spectre (50) PsiMelee/WP Scrap - Hero Code Merlin (50) Fire/WP Sentinel - Hero Code Modred (50) DB/Bio Stalker - Hero Joyful Noise (37) Sonic/Sonic Blaster - Hero Tesamun (50) Street/Shield Scrap - Hero Nova Primeva, the Temple magi- Amtes (50) Demons/Time Mastermind - Hero Khalil al-Jinn (50) Willpower/Street Tank - Hero Nehemes (50) Water/Dark Corruptor - Hero Maruvadi (50) Fire/Time Corruptor - Rogue Edratarees (50) Thermal/Fire Defender - Hero Hamsa (50) Empathy/Dark Defender - Hero Thaelian (50) Sonic/RadBlast Defender- Hero Ferrian (50) Claws/Fire Stalker - Rogue Samia (50) Ice/Dark Blaster - Rogue Karcharias (50) Water/Bio Sentinel - Rogue and Ossuni (50) Claws/Fire Brute - Rogue, on @Laughingcrow Ordus Viatoris, the voyagers- Oreviel (50) Rad/Dark Defender - Hero Circios (50) Cold/Ice Defender - Hero Bahir (50) Human-only Peacebringer - Hero (A heliomancer "photonic Sentinel" rather than a Kheldian) Deigan (50) Archery/Time Corruptor - Hero Arrokoth (50) Claws/Fire Brute - Hero Shuyah (50) Dark/Dark Dominator - Hero Neryth (32) Rad/Ice Stalker - Rogue Restless Ghost (50) Street/Bio Stalker - Hero Abyssal Blade (50) NinjaBlade/Bio Stalker - Hero Ironhorse (50) DB/RadArmor Brute - Hero