Coyotedancer

Over all, I'm pretty fond of the changes... Although the new Thorn Casters really do up the "visual clutter" a fair bit. Not quite to high-level-Talons-levels, mind, but their effects aren't exactly subtle. Also agree on the lt. succubus Placate maybe being a bit much. It's not awful as-is, but they seem to do it often enough that it may put them closer to the annoying-challenge end of the scale than the fun-challenge side. ETA: I was running around stabbing them with Kestrel & Cardinal, a DB/WP Scrap and her perma-summoned Adept companion, for reference. And yes, the explosive magi did a real number on Cardinal a few times. Kes herself is tough enough to handle a couple of them going nuke-boy on her. A Mu Adept? Not so much... Call it the Oranbegan's revenge for that whole Ancient War business, I guess. 😝 ) STA 2: After a bit more Circle-bashing, the Succubi really only get annoying when you've ended up with more than one of them. Especially when they're the only targets left of their respective spawns. I suspect that level of hateability is intentional.

I'll play through the usual low-level missions if I'm using a powerset that I'm unfamiliar with, just to get some familiarity with how it handles at low level. Typically, I do that solo or duo/small team. If the character is made of sets that I already know well? I usually avoid the low-level game entirely, and just toss them into a round of fire farming with Sunni, so that I can start actually playing them at mid-level. That's especially true with lowbie Hero side, which at this point I'm inclined to avoid like the proverbial plague. I've seen that content so many times now that I'd rather let Leonard have the Hollows than slog through the place again. 😖

When we were teaching the CoyoteNephews and their mom to play, we spent maybe ten minutes describing the Origins and the basic tiers... and then pointed out the colors matching across types. That's all it really took for them to understand the system, what they needed and what to look for. They honestly didn't seem to find it all that difficult.

Being able to fine-tune your mission difficulty came along after your time playing. It's useful. You can change both the level of a mission and the group size, giving you more goons to fight than a solo/duo/small team would normally spawn. If you look at the text entry box on your chat UI, there's an arrow on the right. Click it to get a really useful fly-out menu... Notoriety settings are one of the things you can change via that menu. Emotes are there as well.

The snakes deserve it. They're total jerks.

Red Side is Best Side. But it's not as populated as the Hero side of the City, so if you're a "constant teamer"-type of player, do keep that in mind.

Eh. The game is free to play now, Comet. Why not just jump in with a new tank and give it a try? See what you think this time around? If you left "back in the day" before the invention system came along, do read up on Invention sets, set bonuses and all that, though. THAT's the real ticket to making a character who feels like a proper comic book hero or villain. Inventions go a long way towards countering the "nerfed"-feeling that enhancement diversification brought on. Dumpster Diving may be a thing of the past, but with a solid IO build you can still make a mess of a fair-sized pile of goons. Or... if you really want something that kind-of feels more like Old School mass-murderization... You can ALWAYS build a good specialist Fire Farmer and check out one of the AE fire-farming patrol maps. That may scratch the "Torch ALL THE THINGS!!!" itch. 😎

Some people would complain if they didn't have anything to complain about. The game's here. We get to play it without a subscription fee. Anything else that comes along is just extra icing on the cake.

'Kinda fun seeing that many people bouncing around the City...

Dude did seem to make pretty much every blunder he could, there... And yet, still seemed to have some good fun with it. The game having at least a little bit of a learning curve isn't necessarily *DOOM!!*.

Our ability to beat up well-nigh-endless hordes of what are explicitly called out as "immature Paragon Protectors" in one of the recent arc additions makes me doubt that the MiniMe's bobbleheadedness had much to do with the Homecoming devs wanting to avoid putting what might be mistaken for childlike pixels in potentially violent situations. 😝

Scraps are a pretty forgiving choice when you're just learning how to play. (Brutes, too, though Fury management adds a wrinkle that Scrap players don't have to worry about-) I'd say avoid Masterminds for now, along with Peacebringers and Warshades, and the Arachnos VEATs. (They're complicated.) If you're not into melee and plan on teaming extensively, something like a Force Field Defender might be an option. Their bubbles are easy to use and being a little back from the action gives you a chance to learn by watching what your team-mates do. Their personal force field is also a pretty good "panic button" if you get in over your head. They're slow soloists, though, so you would be more team-focused than someone playing a Scrapper or a Brute.

That was never a thing, I'm afraid.... It would be a fun option to have, but the Potion emote from the Mad Science pack never changed your character gender. As mentioned, you CAN do that at Icon/Facemaker's, though. You may be remembering someone who made separate male and female costumes for their characters and then used that emote to switch between them. RE: the costume bits, some items only show up as options with specific others. There are some limitations on what you can use with the trench-coat type coats IIRC (I rarely use them myself, so I can't recall which torso selections work with them and which don't-), so you may have to do some experimenting to find a combination that works.

I have /facepalm bound on every single one of my gang. Every one. Mr. Coyote has /fancybow on most of his and has since way back in the live days. The only one I have macroed is on my Demons MM. Amtes habitually puts her hellishly loud minions all into /PraetorianSalute if I'm going to have her staitonary for any length of time. Those guys are just obnoxious otherwise.

/Fire stalkers are rare birds... I have a Claws/Fire and a KM/Fire I'm fond of, but it's just odd to play.

I never!

When I moved my speed-farmer over to Excelsior, I had to... I'd had the name Haroeris for him on Everlasting (my main server-) from the very early days, but found it taken on Ex a few months in, when I decided to migrate all of the "bird things". I wasn't willing to call Harry anything else, so he's been HAR0ERIS ever since. It was a concession I was willing to make, mostly because he's a soloing farmer. No one ever sees his cheater-name but me.

My favorite soloists are Stalkers, Scraps and Sentinels... But you can have some good fun with a Mastermind, too.

I'm most often a flier... It's not the fastest of the travel powers, but it's the most useful under the most circumstances. That said, the Super Jump/Super Speed combo is just straight-up great fun... *IF* you're a good driver. Otherwise? You'll end up caught on every bridge, bus stop and power-line in the city. 😝

I've had three real loves across my collection of characters here, over on Paragon and back in the Live days... I could keep a character list to those three, but I wouldn't want to go lower than that. I'd end up missing someone. Those three are a Dual Blade/Willpower/Mu Mastery Stalker with a perma-summoned Adept companion (Grey Kestrel and Red Cardinal, who I do tend to think of as a pair, rather than just as Kes on her own-), a Darkity/Dark/Dark Defender (Nemissary. My first and favorite Death Mage, who was built to live life on the front line-) and a Willpower/Dual Blade Tank (Palrah... More a "heavy scrap" than a real tank, but still great fun to play-) I'd pretty seriously miss my Broadsword/Bio Brute (Semnai) and my Dark/WP Sentinel (Shonokin) if I couldn't keep them, too... But I'm not quite as attached to them as I am to the first trio. I have a small case of altitis, I guess. But it's a pretty modest one. 😝

A lot of us who play on the red-side really do seem to be either solos, or static duo/trio small team players, by choice. It's been that way since the Live days, honestly. It always took twice as long to get together a SF team back on Liberty as it took to pull people into a TF, even among the Ouphs and Badgers. And... yeah. I'm "part of the problem", there. I spend a fair bit of time on the villain side, but exclusively solo/duo. I never join larger teams or leagues, because I feel like soloing or running with no more than one or two other people is just more fun on that side of the game world than being part of a crazy murderball.

Nope. I still wouldn't PvP in this game. Sorry, but I suspect you'll get that same answer from a lot of folks here, "dirty casuals" or otherwise.

You'll get a lot of pictures of boxes that claim to have cats in them.

I'm working all day tomorrow, alas. I'll try to jump on tomorrow afternoon (Pacific time-) when I get home, if Real Life lets me. XP

Don't be afraid to tinker around with your graphics settings under the Options menu in-game. Turn on Ultra Mode if you haven't, and play with the shadows, the water and the model detail settings. The game will never look like a "modern" one, but it's aged pretty well with the settings cranked up.