Coyotedancer

Maybe I can help here... That low-level "content" that you still love running? Some of us have done it so many times at this point that the whole idea of doing it again feels exactly as mind-numbingly boring to us as fire-farm door-sitting feels to you. Skipping past it is not seen as any kind of loss because it just IS NOT FUN anymore. Would you be willing to waste your limited amount of play time doing something that was the exact opposite of fun? I suspect not. Some people just enjoy playing "finished" characters a lot more than they enjoy leveling incomplete ones. Not everyone playing this game is a roleplayer or someone who's interested in "building a character's story". They just want to play a game. Others may have a firm idea of who that character is right out of the gate. They don't need 50 levels to figure it out. And, for what it's worth, not all of us who short-cut characters past the drudge-levels do it by door-sitting someone ELSE'S farm. Quite a few of us have more than one account and park our lowbies in missions with our own farmers. You don't see us spamming LFG, so its easy to miss that we exist. So, while our lowbies may be passive, we're still out there playing around and having fun with our farmers in the meantime. (And yes. Believe it or not, some of us really, really DO enjoy running farm maps. You probably don't "get" that either, but that doesn't make it any less true.)

I have them enabled on most of the gang and just email them all to Amtes (my MM) as they drop. XD

I haven't run into a lag issue so far, but I did get a trio of game crashes yesterday afternoon. I haven't had that problem before. 'Sent the automated report in on the first two (They happened close together time-wise while I was in the character creator, on Torch-), but wasn't given that option on the third, which happened a bit later when I was exiting an AE mission with Sarhadi on Everlasting.

That was the Sentinel Exporter, or something similar... And as far as I know, no. There's no way to import those character files to Homecoming. We've all had to start over from scratch.

Serge finally said "Enough is enough!", got together Task Force Tailor and beat them all into sartorial submission.

You're over-stating the prevalence of that point of view, I suspect. Saying that damned-near ANYTHING is believed by "MMO gamers in general" is pushing it, BB. "MMO gamers in general" would have a flame war over rather or not the sky is blue, much less over what constitutes the 'proper' way to play either a specific game or games in general. I'd also say, just as a personal opinion, that the ones who believe any of that bull are dead wrong. And I'm not in any way "unfamiliar with MMO culture". You're taking the opinions of a certain, highly socially-focused (and yes, often vocal-) subset of MMO players as the majority point of view. How much it reflects reality is questionable.

I don't announce or call for buff-gathering when I'm teaming on my support characters. It really is just as easy, as Shred and others have said, to fire the buffs opportunistically at points where most of the team is in one place. I *do* traditionally announce buffs when I'm ship raiding with my Empaths, though. When I'm getting ready to fire off their auras and Barrier or Clarion, I always do them together and will typically broadcast to the league chat with something like "Buffs in the Bowl in 5... 4..." just to give the herders a few seconds warning to hop back in if they want those effects, I'm sure it's annoying to some people... But given how many people actually DO come jumping back into the middle of the murderball when I do that? It also seems to be useful to some of the crew.

Only one... a Dark/Dark/Fire named Sarhadi, who just hit 36.

Yeeeah. That kind of thing is exactly what the LFG channel is for. o_O My peeve basically comes down to Spreadsheet Warriors trying to tell other people what they should like and play... You know the ones. The people who'll go on endlessly. like it's some kind of cardinal sin and total BadWrongFun to actually enjoy "sub-optimal" ATs like Sentinels or Peacebringers, or certain powersets or what-the-hell ever. I find myself just wanting to post that "Shhh. Let people enjoy things." cartoon every time they start. <_<

I must have just been imagining it happening to Kaikara easily half to a third of the time, then. Yep. 'Pure figment of my imagination. Or maybe the people I was running with were secretly kicking her. Regularly. For the LOLs. XD

Just a gentle reminder that farming was A Thing long, long before AE existed. 'Several of the maps from Unai's arc are classics for that. Harvey's Praetorian demons mission.... That kind of thing... Killing AE, or removing the drops and XP from AE arcs, *would not* kill farming or power-leveling. It would just move we farming types back to our "old school" practice of held mission maps. So, yeah. Aside from ticking a lot of people off, it also wouldn't get the anti-farming league the results they want.

'Depends entirely on the character, for me... I often run solo with my Sentinels and Stalkers and Scraps. I exclusively run solo with my one Mastermind. I farm for fun with Harry, my Claws/Fire Brute. I typically exemp and run with mid-level teams on most of my Defenders and on my Corruptor. I haven't touched my Tank or my Controller since I finished their Incarnate toys. I used to be a casual-type Roleplayer, but I'm not sure that really applies anymore. I'm only nominally doing the roleplay thing at all these days. I do solid builds for my crew, but I'm not a "power gamer"-type. I don't tend to play at the raw, bleeding edge even though I love throwing a character into the middle of a big pile of goons just to see what happens. I keep an eye on the auction house, but I'm not really a serious marketeer. I'm a "does it for fun" active farmer, so I really don't need to. I'm also a casual base-builder. My tastes on that front are odd and I know it, so I just build for my own entertainment.

'Guess I'm just hopelessly "middle class" in my mind-set.... That strikes me as a huge waste of INF, even though I could afford it. I'm just more apt to spend the time to convert to what I want than I am throw two or three times what the ATO is worth at the market.

Nope. Ouro arcs are flaky as all hell, too. Getting tired of having the Rogue version of Kai either randomly kicked off of Hero-side teams, or just not being allowed an invitation to join them in the first place by the game, is exactly why I ended up making a second, blue-side native version of the character. It was easier than side-switching every single time I wanted to run her with her hero friends. Which was the only sure way we found to avoid the alignment issues that would result in her being kicked half-way through an arc.. <_<

Agreeing here... AR on Sents needs to be reworked. If you're going for that set, take the Blaster. Otherwise... What's your intention for the character, OP? That's what would drive my own choice. I like Blasters *and* I like Sentinels. (Even though I think some of the damage sets need a balance pass. Fire and DP are fine. Some of the others could use a second look. Poor AR most of all.) Picking one over the other would come down to how I wanted to play them. If the character was going to spend most of their time solo? I'd go for the Sentinel. Even though you CAN build a tough-as-nails Blaster, in my experience Sents just handle that play-style a little better right out of the box. You won't be the king-god of speed and damage, but I'd argue that you really don't NEED to be when you're bouncing through a map alone. If you imagine the character spending every moment of play time with a team? That would tend to say Blaster to me. You'll want the extra damage in order to feel like you're accomplishing something in the midst of an eight-player wrecking-ball and the supports will help with any survivability issues you might have before you get that indestructible UberBuild finished.

The rest? Eh... #5, though? I'd give that one not just an ordinary "no", but a full-on "Oh, HELL NO!" Too many contacts wait too long when it comes to giving you their call-ins already. That would just make things even *worse* when they insist on sending you back and forth from the far butt-end of Nerva or Crey's Folly. <_<

The player of the Scrap I was running that particular guy with would have murderized me. XD

The Black Knights in Night Ward will Taunt you six ways to Sunday.

Don't make me send Harry over there to stab you with a pitchfork. >_<

Yep. Back in the live days Anima Sola was my human/nova bi-form Peacebringer.

That's the one. XD I've only had one character that had the power, and I was anything but impressed.

For what it's worth, current Patron pets absolutely can be perma-summoned. I did it with my old main's Adept partner back in the Live days (Kestrel was a DB/WP Stalker) and FCM (Mr. CD) did it with his Illusion/Time Controller's Fortunata. It just takes a huge build commitment... You have to go for pretty much every single ounce of Recharge you can possibly get.

Nooot necessarily... There's more than one way to be an altaholic. Like I said, I'm currently working on incarnating Alt #32 in my crew. All of the others? Finished 50s. They have their set-builds, their iToys and all that. I complete one before I move on to another. What makes an altaholic is just *HAVING* that cast-of-dozens (or hundreds), not how your character list ended up that way, or how many will or won't ever see completion. XD

For a little more solo challenge early on, consider staring up a character "gold side"... That is to say, a Praetorian... or a "red side" villain. Teams are harder to find in those two settings (In Praetoria in particular, you'll be on your own-), but the missions are not only better-written, they're also not such a cake-walk as the "blue side" early hero experience. Going to First Ward and Night Ward (also Praetorian zones, but accessible by Primal heroes and villains-) when you're in the 20's and 30's might be fun for you, too. That content is also newer and can, if you aren't careful, kick your butt.

People are actually paying you guys 20m for something that they could get from a pack that cost 10m + plus a handful of converters? Damn. People be impatient, yo. XD